A former police officer who telephoned the home of a murder suspect within hours of the loyalist mob attack on Robert Hamill 28 years ago cannot remember the contents of the call, a senior barrister told a court on Friday.
Lodging a plea in mitigation on behalf of retired RUC Reserve Constable Robert Cecil Atkinson, defence KC Barry Gibson told Craigavon Court Court that due to multiple strokes, TMIs and heart attacks, “he cannot recall” the contents of the call he made on 27 April 1997.
Judge Patrick Lynch KC suggested to prosecuting KC Toby Hedworth “there is one person in this room who knows what was said and it’s not me or you and no one else seems to know.”
Mr Hedworth conceded that while the prosecution cannot say what was talked about “however one has to contextualise the call being made by an officer who was on duty at the time, who had been present at the time of the assault and was ringing a young man who was going to be a suspect in the assault and who was also present at the time.”
On the second day of his trial last April Atkinson, from the Brownstone Road in Portadown, Co Armagh, admitted that he conspired to pervert the course of justice.
Following Atkinson’s admission, the prosecution service offered no further evidence against either defendant’s wife Eleanor Atkinson, 70, or against 72-year-old Kenneth Hanvey, from the Derryanvil Road in Portadown and accordingly, not guilty verdicts were recorded in there cases.
The charges arise after Robert Hamill was beaten by a loyalist mob in the early hours of 27 April 1997 and his murder was the subject of a public inquiry because it was alleged that four police officers were positioned in a police vehicle near the scene of the attack but did not intervene.
Atkinson was one of the officers in the police vehicle and the RUC investigation turned into a murder enquiry after the 25-year-old died from his injuries.
A total of six individuals were charged with the murder but the charges against five of them were subsequently withdrawn due to insufficient evidence while a sixth person was acquitted following a trial where Atkinson gave evidence.
On Friday Judge Lynch said that, with delays in the case and the plethora of Atkinson’s medical difficulties , it “takes the case into the realms of exceptionality” and would justify the suspension of any prison sentence.
Freeing Atkinson on bail, the judge said “there’s quite a lot of matters for me to mull over” including victim impact statements as he adjourned the case for a week.