Current Issues - 2003

April 2003

Looking for closure with Justice

The public acknowledgment by the Chief Constable that investigations into the murders of over 200 police officers have been at a standstill opens major issues not just for police families but for Northern Ireland as a whole. Technically the files may not be closed but they are certainly gathering the dust of neglect.

The Federation has been disturbed for some time that the deaths of colleagues were deemed to weigh less heavily in the scale of investigative priorities than those of other more high profile figures or who were murdered more numerously in spectacular fashion. The truth is, of course, that political pressure has been the real engine driving many of the current inquiries; The Saville, Rosemary Nelson, Pat Finucane inquiries, are proof of this point. All deserve to be thoroughly investigated but the pursuit of the terrorists guilty of other murders should never have ended. And now other horrific atrocities are inevitably being pointed up as equally meritorious of re-examination - La Mon House, Claudy, Enniskillen for example.

To use the current euphemistic parlance, acts of completion on all past grievous events are required. No single initiative, such as a truth commission in the manner of South Africa, is likely to succeed in a community as small as Northern Ireland where neighbour could be set against neighbour should the squalid truth of past misdeeds be exposed and culpability pinpointed.

There is no simple answer but as the pace of the peace process picks up, so inevitably does the pressure mount for an adequate response as to how to deal with the murders of so many innocent police officers and civilians. Clearly there is a need for a debate across the whole community, a debate in which this Federation wants to participate on behalf of our late colleagues and the wider police family. The problem is more than a question of police resources and everything to do with political will and the willingness of Northern Ireland to contemplate how it might bring closure with justice to its murderous past.