N.Ireland 'Troubles' families vow to press on, despite new UK law

When a coroner's inquest into the unsolved murder of Sean Brown during Northern Ireland's "Troubles" was relaunched last year, his family hoped their long search for justice could bear fruit.

But with a controversial new UK government law in force from Wednesday, their efforts -- and those of other families of victims in the bitter sectarian conflict over British rule -- have hit a roadblock.

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 is designed to draw a line under the three decades of unrest, which killed more than 3,500 people, ministers say.

Notably, it will halt inquests, civil cases and criminal prosecutions for crimes related to the conflict and grant immunity to former combatants on all sides.

But relatives of those who lost their lives say it extinguishes any remaining hopes of justice for their loved ones.

Critics include victims' rights groups, all political parties in Northern Ireland, the UN and the EU's Council of Europe.

London has also been sued by the Irish government at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

- 'Hiding secrets' -

According to the UK government, some 1,200 deaths from the Troubles, which ended in a landmark peace deal in 1998, remain under investigation.

In 1997 Sean Brown was abducted by pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries in Bellaghy, 50 miles (80 kilometres) west of Belfast while he was locking the gates of the Wolfe Tones Gaelic sports club.

The 61-year-old father-of-six, who was chairman of the club, was shot minutes later at a nearby village.

"He was just an innocent guy and pillar of the community, he was taken out to intimidate that community," his brother Chris, who identified his body, told AFP at the scene.

Decades later, the Brown family are still waiting for information about what actually happened.

Opponents of the new law say its essence is to protect British army and security force veterans who served in Northern Ireland, as well as paramilitaries.

Earlier this year the relaunched Brown inquest was told that more than 25 people, including state agents, were linked by intelligence material to his murder.

"We were completely gobsmacked when we heard that," said Brown's daughter Clare Loughran in the Wolfe Tones clubhouse.

"We had suspected some state involvement all along but to hear it read out in court, we were devastated. Why did so many people want to hurt my Dad?"

That limited release of information came after UK state agencies applied for multiple redactions on sensitive files related to the murder.

The coroner in the case branded the disclosure process by British state agencies as "deplorable and frankly inexcusable".

Niall Murphy, the Brown family's lawyer, showed AFP the released intelligence files at his Belfast office. Most of them were blanked out.

"Every single page, this is the physical method by which the state hides its secrets," said an exasperated Murphy, leafing through one of the dossiers.

"Even the material that is not completely redacted is so heavily redacted as to be completely incomprehensible, it deprives families of access to justice," he said.

The new law is "the act of legislative thugs, abhorrent to the international rule-of-law principle and in clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights", he added.

- Little faith -

After May 1, all so-called legacy cases will be transferred to a new body -- the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).

But families of victims have little faith, and made their opposition known at a protest in Belfast on Wednesday.

"We don't feel that there will be a true, open and honest look at individual cases from the ICRIR, or that it will be something that families will want to comply with, as the British government for so long seems to have been hiding information and facts from families, from inquests, and from the public," said Loughran.

The main Labour opposition's Northern Ireland spokesman Hilary Benn also questioned the credibility of the ICRIR in the UK parliament last week.

According to the head of the ICRIR, the new body will prove doubters wrong.

It will strive to be "independent and impartial" and dedicated to the pursuit of "the unvarnished truth" for bereaved families, Declan Morgan told the Belfast Telegraph newspaper this week.

Loughran promised that her family would not give up chasing the truth, despite the closure of legal avenues.

"People will say, 'look, why don't you try to move on, the Troubles are over', but we can't, we will keep seeking justice, to respect the memory of victims," she said.

pmu/phz/bc