Opinion

Instead of unlawfully snooping on journalists, why wasn’t the PSNI pursuing the Loughinisland killers? - The Irish News view

Damning IPT ruling raises grave concerns about police abuse of power and the law

Family and friends attend the 30th Anniversary of Loughinisland. Six men were killed by UVF gunmen inside a Co Down bar where they had gathered to watch the World Cup. PICTURE COLM LENAGHAN
Family and friends remembered the six men killed by UVF gunmen in Loughinisland in June, the 30th anniversary of the atrocity. Police unlawfully spied on journalists who made a documentary investigating the massacre, a tribunal in London ruled. No-one has been convicted for the killings PICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN
By The Irish News

The scandal that the PSNI conducted an unlawful snooping operation against journalists and a worker at the Police Ombudsman’s office in relation to a documentary about the Loughinisland massacre only deepens the tragedy that there are still no convictions for the 1994 killings.

A twisted irony of the whole sorry saga is that through their careful and determined journalism, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey have brought the Loughinisland families closer to the truth than any police investigation.

A stench of collusion clings to the Loughinisland atrocity. Targeting journalists doing their job does not help clear the air.

The surveillance operation was undoubtedly sinister. But it was also inept, perhaps characteristically so: despite their intense and unlawful covert operation the police failed to identify any of the sources for No Stones Unturned.

It is worth asking whether convictions for Loughinisland would be any closer had the police devoted the same time, energy and creativity to pursuing the perpetrators.

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Sir George Hamilton, the chief constable who approved the Directed Surveillance Authorisation which was quashed by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal on Tuesday, might be able to shed some light on how the PSNI felt emboldened to go down such a dead-end rabbit hole.

Read more: ‘Forget ‘fake news’, Shooting Crows is about what governments do to journalists when they tell the truth’ - Trevor Birney on new Loughinisland massacre book, legal vindication and the runaway success of the Kneecap movie

Mr Birney is right when he says the IPT judgment “raises serious concerns about police abuse of power and the law”.

And as Mr McCaffrey pointed out, the police “should respect press freedom, they must abide by the rule of law and uphold democratic principles of transparency and accountability”.

Those are key tenets that are supposed to separate democracies from authoritarian states. As George Orwell put it: “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”

Read more: Noel Doran: Loughinisland and the long shadow of collusion

That inevitably places journalism under pressure from and into conflict with those who prefer their behaviour stays in the shadows, whether they be wealthy individuals or powerful institutions. Though not unexpected, it is nonetheless beyond dispiriting when an arm of the state such as the PSNI - which is tasked with protecting the public and advancing justice - has abused its unique position.

A stench of collusion clings to the Loughinisland atrocity. Targeting journalists doing their job does not help clear the air

The tangled history of our society, which includes deadly collusion between paramilitaries and state forces, means there are far too many stories like Loughinisland, too many families for whom truth and justice comes dropping slow.

They include the loved ones of Sean Brown, the Bellaghy GAA official whose May 1997 murder has been linked to collusion. As the IPT in London issued its judgment, in Belfast the High Court ruled that the secretary of state should set up a public inquiry - long overdue - into Mr Brown’s murder.

Both cases are tragic reminders of how victims have been failed for too long. We must do better.

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