Challenging Wrong Assumptions

By AM Sunday, July 20, 2014

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Guest writer Christy Walsh tackles the assumption that the IRA can be held responsible for wrongful imprisonment arising from the Northern conflict.

I am disturbed by Cathal MacCoille's shifting of responsibility that the IRA forced the British Legal System into arresting, beating and finally imprisoning the wrong people. As far as I know Gerry Conlon never shared Mr MacCoille's view and neither do I.

At around 1:30pm on 5th June 1991 the IRA left a coffee-jar bomb along the Suffolk Road in West Belfast. Like Gerry Conlon I was falsely accused. I have wondered why the IRA left the device where it was and who left it there. But I have never felt any sense that I should blame the IRA for my predicament - god knows they have done their share of wrong. The IRA in part existed because of the injustice of the British legal system. The injustice of the British legal system historically predates the origins of the IRA and not the other way around as suggested.

In my case according to the Prosecution and its Military Witnesses there was no one else near the scene, only me:

It is a question of a conspiracy of lies, a deliberate attempt to have this man convicted of an offence for which he should not have been convicted ... This case so far as the essential facts are concerned is black and white, either there is a concoction and a fabrication, a series of dastardly lies being told by the military witnesses in this case or there is not. Mistake does not enter into it in my respectful submission.

 ...

The essential matter in this case is that if the Crown case is correct, as I say it is, and if your honour accepts the evidence of the Crown witnesses then the jar was in his pocket: he had possession of it, and there was no forensic evidence. ... But the contrary version of that is that if the accused is right then very serious misdeeds have taken place.

In 1998 one of the main prosecution Witnesses, Private Boyce, withdrew his trial testimony under PACE caution.

In 2008 it was discovered that a known IRA man had been arrested 15 minutes before my arrival at the scene. Documents signed by Superintendent Derek Martindale at 6pm state conclusively that the known IRA man was "caught in possession of an explosive device". The alleged IRA man was discretely released the following day.

In March 2010 my conviction was found unsafe. Before leaving the Court of Appeal I took one of the Prosecutor's files with me. The file contained incriminating evidence of prosecutorial misconduct.

In June 2011, in submissions to the Court, David Ford's position on irrefutable evidence that the wrong person was imprisoned on known false evidence was as follows:

He also refers to his previous (mistaken) suggestions that we regard him as guilty ... If Walsh's application succeeds it may gain a higher profile and raise questions over other convictions. 

On 5th February 2014 I received copies of original statements made by the Soldiers in June 1991 (these are different to the ones provided at my trial in 1992). The original statements disclose that the known IRA man, along with two associates, were caught 'trying to escape from the scene' by the very same soldiers who arrested me.

I do not know any of the 3 men named in the documents and so do not know if any were actually IRA men. It is safe to say that the IRA owned the device.

But to suggest that the Soldiers, Police, Prosecution and Courts did what they did because the IRA made them do it would be completely spurious. If we followed that logic then Nazi and other war criminals could say they did wrong because of somebody else's orders or actions.