Relatives of people killed in the McGurk’s Bar massacre have accused the PSNI of continuing to withhold information about the atrocity.
The claim comes after Chief Constable Jon Boutcher was ordered by a powerful tribunal to disclose previously blocked documents linked to the atrocity.
Some of that information has now been handed over but is heavily redacted, while other information continues to be withheld by police more than 50 years after the mass murder of 15 innocent civilians
The Catholic victims were killed when the UVF detonated a bomb at the north Belfast bar in December 1971.
Campaigners believe there was collusion and that attempts were subsequently made to mislead the public over who was responsible fore the North Queen Street blast.
At the time security forces blamed the IRA, a claim later shown to be untrue.
The PSNI previously refused a request “for the provenance and source” of intelligence that resulted in the false IRA claim.
The Information Rights Tribunal, which held some of its hearings in closed session, told police to hand over some of the requested information.
However, the tribunal judgment reveals the PSNI continues to retain documents it was not ordered to disclose for various reasons.
In December 2020 Ciaran MacAirt, whose grandmother Kitty Irvine, was killed in the explosion, requested information under the Freedom of Information Act about “the provenance and source of police” information provided to a Joint Security Committee meeting, which took place after the attack and included politicians and police.
A police briefing included the false claim that “circumstantial evidence indicates that this was a premature detonation and two of those killed were known IRA members at least one of whom had been associated with bombing activities”.
Mr MacAirt, who works with the charity Paper Trail, has also traced the “disinformation” to what he describes as a “secret agreement” between Brigadier Frank Kitson, the British army’s Belfast commander, and the RUC, reached within hours of the explosion.
An entry in the Commander’s Diary for 39 Brigade found by Mr MacAirt shows that Mr Kitson told his staff four hours after the bomb blast that the “RUC have a line that the bomb in the pub was a bomb designed to be used elsewhere, left in the pub to be picked up by the Provisional IRA”.
Mr MacAirt said that despite the recent disclosure of documents significant questions remain.
“This important legal victory before the Tribunal establishes that PSNI cannot or will not explain the secret agreement between British Army Commander Frank Kitson and the RUC to blame the victims for the McGurk’s Bar Massacre or the following false information disseminated by the British armed forces, including RUC,” he said.
He said the tribunal findings “proves that PSNI not only withheld significant information from the historic investigations, courts and families, but also continues to withhold critical evidence in the mass murder of our loved ones”.
“Our families see no change between RUC and PSNI.”
Christopher Stanley, of KRW Law, said “until the ‘truth is out’, truth-seeking will not be stemmed and the peace will be trapped in process with all the grief that follows”.
A spokeswoman for the PSNI said: “As civil proceedings are ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.”
