Bloody Sunday : Man Arrested!
derry |
crime and justice |
news report 
Friday January 21, 2005 15:09
by Shane OCurry - Pat Finucane Centre
s.ocurry at ulster dot ac dot uk
33 years after the massacre, the state makes an arrest... of a civilian witness for not cooperating!
A Derry man who had refused the subpoena by British judge Lord Saville's enquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings was arrested on Wednesday.
The man, known to the enquiry as "PIRA9" had refused to cooperate with the tribunal becausof the harsh treatment given to civilan witnesses and the soft ride given to the soldiers who did the killings. Through his lawyers, he had told the tribunal that the evidence on which the subpoena calling him to testify was based - the testimony of a self confessed informer naming ”PIRA9”as an IRA man and placing him near the scene of the killings - was false and refutable in its entirety.
The irony of ”PIRA9”'s arrest and imprisonment, while the soldiers who did the killing remain unpunished, was not lost on relatives of those murdered on 30 Jan 1972. This is likely to be the only arrest made as a result of Bloody Sunday.
It is expected that X - who has been granted anonymity by the tribunal - will now testify by video link - though not from Maydown PSNI station as the tribunal had wanted.
For a Calendar of this Year's Bloody Sunday Commemorative Week (24-30 Jan) Linking British State Atrocities in Ireland to those committed By the UK, US and Israel in Iraq and Palestine, see:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68298
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3In a bizarre and little remarked scandal, Mr Doherty has been arrested and will be the first man incarcerated for Bloody Sunday.
While the Irish govt squirm over words, unsupported by facts, from a British functionary (Hugh Orde), they have paid no attention to the facts, from many, many eyewitnesses, of 14 people being shot dead in Derry and a man, obviously innocent, being arrested.
Shame on them.
Yet again the arrogance of the British Judicial system leaves us breathless. 13 men are shot dead on a demonstration in Derry in 1972. They hold a second inquiry after the initial one is discredited worldwide. And the only person to serve time as a result of their inquiry is someone who refused, on political grounds, to take part in their inquiry. Nothing done about the government ministers, civil servants and soldiers, who all suffered from collective amnesia during the inquiry. Surely they were more contemptuous of the inquiry than Martin Doherty!
As for British Justice. It's up there in the oxymoron charts with military intelligence and Fianna Fáil socialists!!!
Irish Republican Socialist Party
PO Box 1981, Derry
Tel 028 71262999
Saturday 22 Jan 2005
IRSP representative in Derry, Eamon O’Donnell, today hit out at the British establishment and their lackeys in Ireland in their continuing contempt for the people of Derry by their politically motivated arrest and imprisonment of local Republican Martin Doherty.
Thirty-three years since Bloody Sunday the British state have yet to learn the follies of their past mistakes when they imprisoned their opponents in Ireland on false and fabricated charges. These tactics failed in the past and they will fail now. Is this the best that they can throw at us?
These events do little to instill confidence in the Saville inquiry among the people of Derry although this inquiry is now going down the road of the ill-fated Widgery and the whitewash that it produced.
The people of Derry, going on past and present experience, cannot expect truth, honesty and justice from the British establishment in Ireland. The IRSP call for the immediate release of Martin Doherty from his illegal incarceration. It is our profound belief that there will never be justice in Ireland while the British maintain their occupation of the six counties.
ENDS
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