Irlandinitiative Heidelberg - The 1972 bombing of Claudy

The North's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has said he was in the IRA in Derry city in 1972 but did not know who carried out the Claudy bomb attack, and still doesn't know.

The Claudy bombing happened in the County Derry village on July 31st, 1972, killing five Catholics and four Protestants. It took place on the same day as Operation Motorman, an unprecedented British army invasion of the no-go areas in Derry.

Operation Motorman took place six months after Bloody Sunday and was the subject of extensive planning from both a military and propaganda point of view.

When three bombs exploded in the county Derry village on the day, it was claimed that the IRA had carried out the attack - as a diversion. The IRA has always denied it was responsible.

Mr McGuinness revealed this week that he had met Fr James Chesney shortly before his death in 1980 but that he knew nothing of the allegations that the priest was one of the Claudy bombers.

The allegations were found in RUC police files uncovered by the Police Ombudsman's office. They also confirmed that the British government mysteriously sought to have the priest secretly moved out of the North in secret discussions with the Catholic church.

Last month the North's Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson accepted the RUC allegations at face value, but found no explanation of the plan to move Fr Chesney.

"When I met Fr Chesney . . . I was unaware at that time of the allegations against him," he said.

"I was asked to visit him as someone who was dying and was a republican sympathiser. Sadly I have had many such meetings over the years. The Claudy attack or the IRA were not discussed in our conversation," added Mr McGuinness.

"There was no discussion whatsoever about IRA actions of any description. It was basically a political discussion on his strong views that Ireland should be united," he said.

Mr McGuinness referred to a statement he made to the BBC in 2002, in which he said he did not know the priest. He said that, 22 years after the meeting, the statement to the BBC was made "in good faith".

"It is only recently that in the controversy surrounding the publication of the ombudsman's report and the allegations from RUC sources about Fr Chesney that I was reminded of my visit to him shortly before his death. That is the only contact I ever had with Fr Chesney," he said.

Mr McGuinness said he was aware that there was a public perception that the IRA was behind the Claudy attack but that he didn't know who was responsible. "I was in Derry city at the time of the move by the British army into the city and that was on the same day as the Claudy bomb," he said.

"I was very angry when I heard that a number of bombs had exploded in Claudy and that innocent people had been killed and I think those people in Claudy are entitled to the truth," he added.

He said the IRA in Derry city "played no part" in the bombing. He also met "two very senior members of the IRA in Dublin" at the time.

"I asked was the IRA involved in the Claudy bomb and they told me no, and it has been a mystery ever since."

The Church has insisted that it was not involved in a cover-up and Bishop Edward Daly said he was unconvinced of Fr Chesney's guilt, expressing concerns that "untested intelligence files" were being accepted as proof.

Mr McGuinness said he was sympathetic to that view and the now widely held perception about the IRA and Fr Chesney could have arisen from information put out by the RUC.

Tuesday-Thursday, 31 August-2 September, 2010

Analysis: Truth and justice for all

By Jim Gibney for Irish News

I can fully understand why the relatives of those killed in the 1972 bombing of Claudy welcomed the ombudsman's report.

Listening to the relatives speaking after the report it is quite clear that a large part of their hurt is caused by the lack of public recognition of the immense suffering and loss they experienced as a result of the atrocity.

Their loss was compounded by the silence and a lack of attention to the bombing and in particular the scale of the human loss involved.

The relatives are entitled to the truth about the Claudy bombing and they should be given it. If the IRA was involved then now is the time for it to admit its involvement.

If it was not involved then those responsible should publicly explain their actions. What I find unacceptable is the use by the ombudsman of information supplied by the various intelligence agencies as the basis of his findings. The ombudsman's office needs to be very careful when dealing with this type of historical information because its purpose at the time was to set people up for arrest and internment. Given the role of the intelligence agencies here in fuelling the conflict they can hardly be viewed as impartial or as oracles of truth or accuracy. And what is even more unacceptable is the use by the media of this information in the sensational way it was used and the naming of the priest Fr Chesney as the person behind the bombing.

The priest became the story, as did the alleged cover up between the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the British secretary of state Willie Whitelaw instead of the awful experiences of the relatives whose loved ones died in the Claudy bombing.

In my view the past is too important to be handled in this way because it invites sensational reporting which is more concerned about myth making than assisting those in search of the truth.

And there is a danger unless it is challenged that elements in the intelligence agencies will use this method of drip-feeding information into the media to undermine political progress. It is also worth noting that we do not know the names of a single British soldier involved in the killing of eleven people in Ballymurphy following the introduction of internment in August 1971, though the state does. And after five years of an inquiry and the welcome judgment by Saville into Bloody Sunday we still do not know the names of the soldiers involved, though the state does. Nor do we know the names of the British soldiers involved in the killing of six people on the New Lodge Road in 1974, though the state does.

What we do know is that the British government protects these killers and grants them anonymity.

During the years of the conflict many people were imprisoned, some for very long periods, on the basis of confessions beaten out of them during interrogation.

The state has also protected these human rights abusers. During the years of internment without trial between August 1971 and Christmas 1975 hundreds of men were held without trial.

I was interned for nearly two years. In an attempt to legitimise internment the British government changed its name from 'internment' to 'detention' and introduced tribunals with judges out of apartheid South Africa to 'try' us for a Litany of allegations.

These allegations were based on 'information supplied' from whom we were not told. At the tribunal an accuser hid behind a screen and read out the accusations.

No one knew the name of the 'voice' behind the curtain. On the basis of what was said I and hundreds like me were held in custody.

The allegations on file were considered by the 'judge' as evidence of involvement in IRA-related activities.

Where are those files now? Are they in the hands of the intelligence agencies and if so could they become the basis for further reports by the ombudsman or others? We must ensure that events from our tragic past are not hijacked and used to delay a better future for all just as we must ensure truth and justice for all.

Monday, 30 August, 2010

Ombudsman's claims must be challenged

By Bishop Edward Daly for Irish News

I retired from public life 17 years ago but recently have felt obliged to come out of retirement temporarily to deal with media demands arising out of the Saville report and, now, the Police Ombudsman's report on the Claudy bombings.

As a curate and bishop in Derry during some of the worst episodes of the 'Troubles' I got to know many journalists who came to report on many sensitive issues.

I see a less challenging style of journalism at work now.

Maybe it is just that many of the reporters have no experience of the exacting pressures that their professional predecessors faced as they foraged for truth here in the]970s.

Journalists then soared above the pressures of spin from government and combatants on all sides. They had exacting standards as they scrutinised and recorded controversial events.

They asked awkward questions. Papers and broadcast networks took independent lines on stories. They did not sheepishly follow establishment or state.

In contrast, I find media coverage of the Claudy report very disquieting. Media have not questioned key aspects of the ombudsman's report in relation to allegations that Fr James Chesney was a senior IRA figure directly linked to the bombings.

Everyone takes the same unquestioning line and competes to write the most lurid headline. The once sacrosanct presumption of innocence has been dispensed with and replaced with a presumption of guilt.

I am not at all convinced that Fr Chesney was involved in the Claudy bombings. I may be mistaken,but I do not think so. I was a contemporary of his at school. I did not know him very well but knew him reasonably well.

Personal involvement in several major miscarriage of justice cases, for example the Birmingham Six, has bred in me constructive scepticism. I have seen convictions based on signed admissions and forensic evidence completely overturned years later.

Fr Chesney was never arrested, questioned, charged or convicted. He cannot answer for himself. He has been dead 30 years.

The report aired suspicions about him that were based solely on intelligence reports. But intelligence and evidence are completely different things. Why was the ombudsman unable to find evidence against him after years of investigation? He found only these 'intelligence reports', and 1972-type RUC intelligence at that.

In the 1970s there was widespread scepticism about RUC Special Branch intelligence.

Hundreds were interned on such intelligence.

Now, media portray as fact unsubstantiated claims emanating from agencies whose history is anything but clean. Where have all the campaigners for justice gone? The Claudy dead and wounded and their relatives deserve both truth and justice. The were victims of evil acts of violence. They were also cruelly deceived by senior RUC figures and the Northern Ireland secretary in the failure to ensure that the bombing was thoroughly investigated.

If police suspected Fr Chesney in the atrocity they should have arrested him rather than closing the case, thus allowing all the perpetrators to go free.

Can anyone believe that just because 'Man A', whom the RUC suspected of involvement in major horrendous terrorist crime, gave another major suspect (Fr Chesney) in the same crime as an alibi, that police could allow them both walk free? How did security forces become so coy whenever Fr Chesney came on their radar even when they alleged that a dog detected explosives in his car? That was not my experience in south Derry then, when I was often terrified and humiliated by the treatment and delays I experienced at security-force checkpoints as I returned from Confirmations and other pastoral duties late at night.

Other aspects of the report are strange. For example, an NIO note of December 6 1972 attributes to CardinalConway an uncorroborated description of Fr Chesney as being "a very bad man" - a very mild commentary on someone alleged to be a mass murderer.

I knew Cardinal Conway quite well during 1974-77. That was not a phrase he would use. It appears to me it was Northern Ireland secretary William Whitelaw's version of what the cardinal did or did not say.

Does anyone sincerely believe that if Cardinal Conway and my predecessor Bishop Farren believed a mass murderer was in the Church's ranks they would have permitted him to continue in the active priesthood? I cannot believe they would have omitted to tell me when I was appointed as Bishop of Derry in 1974 if they had for a moment believed one of the priests in my future diocese was a mass murderer.

Mass murder cannot be compared with any other sin or crime. It is the foulest and most obscene of deeds. I witnessed mass murder at first hand in 1972. I am more aware than most of how appalling and grotesque it is and the enormity of it.

It is a huge insult to suggest I would knowingly allow someone whom I knew to be a mass murderer to serve as a priest in my diocese.

I do not accept theories voiced by several people in the aftermath of the report about priests being endangered and a possible subsequent fall-out in society if Fr Chesney had been arrested.

Two priests were murdered by the British army in Belfast just months earlier that year and there wasn't exactly community uproar.Did anyone believe the mere arrest of an obscure priest in Co Derry would worsen the already chaotic Northern Ireland climate? Northern Ireland was a war zone in ]972. Some 500 people were killed.

I do not accept the ombudsman's suggestion to reporters that Fr Chesney continued his republican activities when he was in Donegal. As bishop at that time, I was aware of his previous espousal of views, and he knew I was having him observed. There was never a complaint about him.

I believe it possible that the RUC wanted Fr Chesney out of south Deny because of his publicly proclaimed republican sympathies and a fear of the influence these might exert on young people in the area.

The IRA was seeking recruits and Fr Chesney's public views were seen, perhaps rightly, as dangerous. Police wanted him out of a potential powder keg and used William Whitelaw to persuade Cardinal Conway into facilitating this.

Of course it would have been preferable if the cardinal had told Whitelaw "to get lost" and to arrest Fr Chesney if there was evidence, I can reach that conclusion in the comparatively peaceful climate of today. Thank God I was not in the cardinal's position in the mayhem of 1972. Perhaps Fr Chesney's conduct did spark suspicion that he was involved with the IRA.

The pertinent questions must be, however: was he or was he not a member of the IRA and, if so, was he involved in the Claudy bombing? I don't know. The ombudsman's report and the subsequent media reporting do not offer any evidence to help answer these questions, Claudy has at last received its legitimate and long overdue recognition as one of Northern Ireland's most despicable acts of terror.

I will continue to pray "the truth will out". The families, the community and Fr Chesney's relatives need to hear it. I hope the Claudy families launch a campaign that achieves justice and truth. I hope that clergy will continue to offer pastoral and spiritual support. I am pleased to hear that the Bloody Sunday families, with all their years of expertise, have offered to assist the Claudy families.

I hope journalists will assist them, too.

I now plan to return once more to private life. I hope that justice will finally be done to the dead of Claudy as well as the dead of Bloody Sunday.

Deutsche Übersetzung Hier

Tuesday-Thursday, 25-27 August, 2010

A protected species?

By Irish Republican News

The British government has apologised for protecting a 'suspect' in the 1972 Claudy bombing, but is still refusing to reveal to the public the full details of what it knows about the attack.

Three bombs killed nine people -- five Catholics and four Protestants -- in the County Derry village. The attack took place less than six months after the Bloody Sunday massacre and amid surging support for the IRA. No-one was questioned in regard to the bombing, which was blamed on the IRA, but which it denied.

The North's Police Ombudsman has now found that senior RUC police sought the assistance of the British government to handle the case of local priest Fr James Chesney, who the RUC said was heavily involved in the attack.

After a meeting with the Catholic church -- at the highest level -- the church agreed to move Chesney to a parish across the border in Donegal, where he lived until his death in 1980.

Ombudsman Al Hutchinson found that an "RUC decision to seek the (British) government's assistance through an engagement with senior figures in the Catholic Church, and then to accept an understanding that was reported back to them, compromised the investigation of the Claudy bombing; failed those who were murdered and injured; and undermined the police officers who were investigating the atrocity".

British Secretary of State Owen Paterson has ruled out a public inquiry into the cover-up, despite calls for answers from survivors of the attack.

Paterson, who made an apology to the Claudy families on behalf of the British government, refused any further inquiry as it "wouldn't have anyone to interview." He also refused to permit the release of government papers on the subject.

According to the Ombudsman's report, 'intelligence' files held by the RUC alleged Fr Chesney was the IRA's director of operations in south Derry, and had been directly involved in the 1972 Claudy bombings.

A public appeal for more information on Chesney by the Ombudsman has been greeted with suspicion.

Republicans familiar with the IRA campaign in that area said the Ombudsman appeared to have taken RUC intelligence reports as hard evidence.

"It is extraordinary that the Ombudsman's report into the Claudy bombing pours judgment upon the late Fr Chesney and then asks for witnesses to come forward with evidence to support its case," said a former Derry-based IRA Volunteer, Shane Paul O'Doherty.

"Would this be putting the hanging before the trial?"

After he moved to Donegal, the RUC files alleged that he continued to engage in IRA actions, a detail which appalled the Claudy victims and amazed Mr O'Doherty.

"If Fr Chesney was involved in the IRA unit that bombed Claudy and if he was later still involved in the IRA while based in Malin Head, Donegal, it is extraordinary that IRA persons in the Derry brigade never heard of him until 2002 and were never able to make use of any of his services in the early or mid-1970s in Derry city or in Donegal," Mr O'Doherty said.

Retired bishop of Derry Edward Daly said that he still doubted that Fr Chesney was heavily involved in the IRA, despite the conclusions of the Ombudsman's report.

Bishop Daly interviewed the south Derry priest twice, in 1974 and 1977, about claims that he was involved in the attack. He said that on each occasion Fr Chesney vehemently denied the allegations.

He dismissed claims by unionists that the British decision not to arrest Chesney was intended to protect the Catholic church.

"The failure of the RUC to arrest and question Fr Chesney in 1972 or later is beyond understanding," the Derry clergyman said.

"This failure is graphically described in yesterday's report. I believe that this constituted a huge betrayal of the Claudy victims."

The Claudy bombing has been compared to the 1998 Omagh bombing, in that the public outcry over civilian casualties almost derailed the IRA campaign at a time when it was building momentum.

The admission of a British cover-up over the bomb attack has now prompted similar questions over the possible involvement of 'agents provocateurs' in Claudy. However, Chesney's role, if any, remains a mystery.