Undercover soldiers 'killed unarmed civilians in Belfast'
Fuente: BBC
Soldiers from an undercover unit used
by the British army in Northern Ireland killed unarmed civilians, former members
have told BBC One's Panorama.
Speaking publicly for the first time, the ex-members of the Military Reaction
Force (MRF), which was disbanded in 1973, said they had been tasked with
"hunting down" IRA members in Belfast. The former soldiers said they believed the unit had saved many lives.The Ministry of Defence said it had referred the disclosures to police.
The details have emerged a day after Northern Ireland's attorney general,
John Larkin, suggested ending any prosecutions over Troubles-related killings
that took place before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
The soldiers appeared on Panorama on condition their
identities were disguised The proposal has been criticised by groups representing relatives of
victims. Panorama has been told the MRF consisted of about 40 men handpicked from
across the British army.
Before it was disbanded 40 years ago, after 18 months, plain-clothes soldiers
carried out round-the-clock patrols of west Belfast - the heartland of the IRA -
in unmarked cars.
Three former members of the unit, who agreed to be interviewed on condition
their identities were disguised, said they had posed as Belfast City Council
road sweepers, dustmen and even "meths drinkers", carrying out surveillance from
street gutters.
But surveillance was just one part of their work. One of the soldiers said they had also fired on suspected IRA members. He described their mission as "to draw out the IRA and to minimise their
activities... if they needed shooting, they'd be shot".
For 15 years, Northern Ireland has been divided about how to deal with the
legacy of three decades of conflict. The compromise has been the establishment of the Historical Enquiries Team, a
group of former detectives, who are reviewing all deaths in Northern Ireland
during the conflict, primarily to answer questions from their relatives.
But now the Northern Ireland attorney general has reignited the vexed issue
of whether truth recovery through a virtual amnesty is preferable to
prosecution.
John Larkin has called for an end to all prosecutions and inquiries in
relation to Troubles-related killings. The disclosures by Panorama are bound to add to this debate.
The closest former MRF soldiers have previously come to breaking cover is as
the pseudonymous authors of two semi-fictionalised paperbacks, one of whom has
referred to the MRF as a "legalised death squad".
The factual account of the MRF may not be quite as colourful. Nonetheless,
the evidence gleaned from seven former members, declassified files and
witnesses, does point to a central truth - that MRF tactics did sometimes mirror
the IRA's.
'Targets taken
down'
Another former member of the unit said: "We never wore
uniform - very few people knew what rank anyone was anyway. "We were hunting down hardcore baby-killers, terrorists, people that would
kill you without even thinking about it."
A third former MRF soldier said: "If you had a player who was a well-known
shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations... then he had to be taken
out. "[They were] killers themselves, and they had no mercy for anybody."
In 1972 there were more than 10,600 shootings in Northern Ireland. It is not
possible to say how many the unit was involved in. The MRF's operational records have been destroyed and its former members
refused to incriminate themselves or their comrades in specific incidents when
interviewed by Panorama.
But they admitted shooting and killing unarmed civilians. When asked if on occasion the MRF would make an assumption that someone had a weapon, even if they could not see one, one of the former soldiers replied "occasionally".
"We didn't go around town blasting, shooting all over the place like you see on the TV, we were going down there and finding, looking for our targets, finding them and taking them down," he said.
Patricia McVeigh says her father Patrick was shot in
the back as he stopped to talk to men at a checkpoint "We may not have seen a weapon, but there more than likely would have been
weapons there in a vigilante patrol."
Panorama has identified 10 unarmed civilians shot, according to witnesses, by
the MRF:
- Brothers John and Gerry Conway, on the way to their fruit stall in Belfast city centre on 15 April 1972
- Aiden McAloon and Eugene Devlin, in a taxi taking them home from a disco on 12 May 1972
- Joe Smith, Hugh Kenny, Patrick Murray and Tommy Shaw, on Glen Road on 22 June 1972
- Daniel Rooney and Brendan Brennan, on the Falls Road on 27 September 1972
Patricia McVeigh told the BBC she believed her father, Patrick McVeigh, had
been shot in the back and killed by plain clothes soldiers on 12 May 1972 and
said she wanted justice for him. "He was an innocent man, he had every right to be on the street walking home.
He didn't deserve to die like this," she said.
Her solicitor Padraig O'Muirigh said he was considering civil action against
the Ministry of Defence in light of Panorama's revelations. The MoD refused to say whether soldiers involved in specific shootings had
been members of the MRF.
'Pretty
gruesome'
It said it had referred allegations that MRF soldiers
shot unarmed men to police in Northern Ireland. But the members of the MRF who Panorama interviewed said their actions had
ultimately helped bring about the IRA's decision to lay down arms.
Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British army, and a young
paratrooper captain in 1972, said he had known little of the unit's activities
at the time, but admired the bravery of soldiers involved in undercover
work. He said: "That takes a lot of courage and it's a cold courage. It's not the
courage of hot blood [used by] soldiers in a firefight. "You know if you are discovered, a pretty gruesome fate may well await you -
torture followed by murder."
The IRA planted nearly 1,800 bombs - an average of
five a day - in 1972
Col Richard Kemp, who carried out 10 tours of Northern Ireland between 1979
and 2001, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme charges could be brought if there
was new evidence unarmed civilians had been killed. But he added: "Soldiers often speak with bravado and I wonder how many of
those soldiers are saying that they themselves shot and killed unarmed
civilians."
Panorama has learnt a Ministry of Defence review concluded the MRF had "no
provision for detailed command and control". Forty years later and families and victims are still looking for answers as
to who carried out shootings.
Former detectives are reviewing all of the deaths in Northern Ireland during
the conflict as part of the Historical Enquiries Team set up following the peace
process.
Around 11% of the 3,260 deaths being reviewed were the responsibility of the
state.
Fuente
