UK violated human rights, court rules

STRASBOURG, France -- The UK Government has been found guilty of violating the human rights of 10 IRA members shot dead in Northern Ireland by security forces.

In four separate incidents, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that procedural violation of Article 2 of the Human Rights Convention guaranteeing a right to life had been made.

Relatives of the victims, including one who prompted claims that security forces were operating a shoot-to-kill policy, have been awarded £10,000 ($15,000) compensation in the ruling, which was announced on Friday.

The court considered four separate incidents between 1982 and 1992.

The victims' relatives brought the cases to the court last April, arguing that they had been denied the right to an "effective investigation" into the killings.

They argued that the shootings and the subsequent investigations amounted to a breach of the Human Rights Convention, which guarantees the right to life.

Following the ruling, relatives demanded that the police and troops involved in the shootings be charged with murder.

AUDIO Brice Dickson, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission: all rights abusers should be held to account 950 Kb/88 secs. AIFF or WAV sound

Mark Thompson, of the Relatives for Justice, said: "This has been an exhaustive legal battle.

"Relatives have gone down a road they did not want to go. It is an indictment of the British Government and its shoot to kill policy and an indictment of the legal system in place in the six counties (Northern Ireland).

"It is a policy specially constructed to protect the guilty and those people who carried out the shoot to kill policy.

"The people responsible should be held accountable. They should be charged with murder."

The four incidents span a decade and involve the deaths of 12 IRA men and one Sinn Fein member at the hands of the SAS, the RUC and the Ulster Defence Association -- allegedly acting in collusion with the RUC.

Lawyers for the families claimed excessive force was used and that there was no effective investigation after each incident, in contravention of the requirements of the human rights code, to which Britain is a signatory.

The cases were brought by relatives, including those of Patrick Kelly and seven other IRA men who died in a gunfight with the SAS at Loughgall, Co Armagh, in 1987.

Kelly's sister, Mairead Kelly, said the ruling would clear the way for hundreds of other families of victims shot dead by police and British soldiers to take action.

She told the Press Association: "It is time the British got off the high moral ground and stopped lecturing people about human rights.

"The British have now been found guilty in front of the world and seen to be one of the biggest violaters of all.

"They have been found guilty of taking peoples' lives with a shoot to kill policy. This cannot be washed under the carpet. Everybody, and I mean everybody, who was involved in this, including those who initiated and planned it, must held accountable."

The ruling comes a day after a European report issued in Strasbourg found that while conditions have improved in Northern Ireland's interrogation centres, abuses and attempts to "browbeat" confessions out of terrorism suspects have continued.

Britain said it welcomed the publication of the 59-page report from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which visited key Northern Ireland facilities in late 1999.

Thursday's report praised Britain for closing the most criticised interrogation center, Castlereagh in east Belfast, in December 1999.

It also found that the videotaping and audiotaping of interviews meant that abuse complaints by suspects had "slowed to a trickle."

But the report by the committee, which is part of the Council of Europe, noted several examples in which police and soldiers continued to behave improperly.

In one incident, videotaped in November 1999, detectives lifted a desk and hit an uncooperative suspect as he lay on the floor.

Other prisoners complained of a painful restraint technique in which officers stood on the backs of their legs while they were kneeling.

The government said it and the police "agree that the sort of scenes witnessed in the video are regrettable and do not represent normal practice in Northern Ireland."

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European Court of Human Rights
UK Government
Royal Ulster Constabulary
Ministry of Defence
British Special Air Service

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