Collusion between Special Branch officers and a loyalist death squad was made possible by support at the ‘highest level’, Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan said yesterday.
Members of a north Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force death squad involved in up to 15 murders while working as police informers, were protected by Special Branch handlers to ensure they escaped prosecution, her report has confirmed.
Vital intelligence was withheld from detectives investigating the killings, her three-year inquiry found.
Special Branch also blocked searches for UVF weapons.
The Police Ombudsman concluded that her investigation had established collusion between certain officers within Special Branch and the UVF gang based in Belfast’s Mount Vernon district.
Introducing her 160-page report, O’Loan said: ‘There was no effective strategic management of these informants. As a consequence of the practices of Special Branch, the position of the UVF, particularly in north Belfast and Newtownabbey was consolidated and strengthened over the years.’
She added: ‘It would be easy to blame the junior officers’ conduct in dealing with various informants and indeed they are not blameless.
‘However, they could not have operated as they did without the knowledge and support at the highest level of the RUC and the PSNI.’
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams commented: ‘The report centred on a small area and over a short period of time in the 1990s.
‘This has been going on since the 1970s.
‘Over 1,000 people were killed, with the collusion of the RUC, Special Branch and loyalist death squads.’
The Ombudsman’s investigation was into the events surrounding the murder of Raymond McCord Junior, 22, a former RAF man found beaten to death in a quarry on the northern outskirts of Belfast in November 1997.
The inquiry was prompted by the struggle of his father, a Belfast welder also called Raymond, to find out who killed his son.
The father said police had treated him like ‘a crank’ and he received a death threat from the UVF last weekend.
The report centred on ‘Informant No 1’, known to be former UVF gang member Mark Haddock, who was paid at least £79,840 during the period under investigation from 1991 to 2003.
Information held by police, and corroborated by other sources, indicates that Haddock, who was in prison at the time, ordered his murder and that another man, out on leave from jail, carried it out, the report found.
The suspects were later arrested, questioned and released without charge.
The investigation found the gang of informants were linked by reliable police intelligence to the murders of ten people.
They were also associated with another 72 crimes, including ten attempted murders, ten punishment shootings, 13 punishment attacks, a bombing in Monaghan in the Irish Republic, and 17 instances of drug dealing as well as additional criminal damage, extortion and intimidation.
The report called for a number of murder investigations to be re-opened.
But the ombudsman said that evidence was deliberately destroyed to ensure there could not be prosecutions.
O’Loan’s inquiry widened out to include a catalogue of killings.
The report revealed that Informant No 1, Haddock, was arrested and questioned a total of 19 times in one case. His handlers carried out the main interviews and ‘created false notes’.
Two men were later convicted but Special Branch, with the agreement of a Deputy Assistant Chief Constable, did not disclose to the DPP the involvement of a police agent, the report alleged.
Special Branch authorised the arrest of ‘Informant No 1’ over the UVF murder of Catholic taxi driver Sharon McKenna who was shot dead in January 1993.
He was detained for six days and interviewed 37 times, with his handler carrying out some of the questioning, O’Loan said.
Again the suspect was released without charge.
The Ombudsman’s report said two retired Assistant Chief Constables refused to cooperate with the investigation.
O’Loan said former Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan was interviewed by her office, but was unable to assist the investigation.
Her report said: ‘Others, including some serving officers, gave evasive, contradictory, and on occasion farcical answers to questions.
‘On occasion those answers indicated either a significant failure to understand the law, or contempt for the law.’
