Martin Galvin with a letter to the Irish News that featured on 4th June 2013. It addresses the arrest of John Downey
A chara
Barra McGrory has called for an end to the “vacuum of uncertainty”, whether to prosecute or pardon in pre-1998 conflict cases. Meanwhile the only real deciders, the British, showed no uncertainty in sending constabulary to arrest John Downey at Gatwick airport.
McGrory fails to recognise that any apparent inconsistencies mask deliberate double standards, set up by the British to prosecute IRA veterans while effectively pardoning crown force killers of innocent nationalists.
The British do not trouble themselves to contrive and carry out new methods of injustice merely to discard them. Having imprisoned an Independent Republican, Gerry McGeough, on 1981 charges, and released him with a license and farewell strip-search, the crown felt ready to move against someone closer to Sinn Fein for a 1982 IRA action. Who will be next?
Weston Park pledges are broken, with the excuse that the DUP vetoed them at Stormont. McGeough got oral promises he trusted to return to Tyrone, but these were disavowed when he dared to stand for election.
The British used Sinn Fein to authenticate the written safe conduct letter which helped lure John Downey into the Gatwick trap, once the McGeough precedent had been swallowed. Will Republicans sit still for this duplicity at Stormont? What other promises through Sinn Fein have the British made to be broken when expedient?
Already there has been one landmark trial stemming from Hyde Park. Danny McNamee spent 12 years as an innocent man in a British prison before the fingerprint and forensic evidence used to convict him were thrown out on appeal. How can the same discredited forensic evidence and experts culpable for one miscarriage of justice be given any chance to commit another miscarriage of justice against John Downey?
Meanwhile the undeclared immunity or impunity for members of the British Army or constabulary who committed or colluded in sanctioned murders is unbroken. Some believe that these unjustified and unjustifiable killings of innocent nationalists have been put on the long finger. It might be a better metaphor to say that the British are giving us a much less polite finger gesture. How long will Republicans sit still for it?
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Galvin still ignores America's concentration camp in Guantanomo !I see Roger Brady had a full catholic funeral, is there such a thing as a true Marxist republican ? We are still awaiting the first atheist republican !
ReplyDeleteDon't ya just love hypocrisy ?