Northern Ireland secretary due to give evidence to parliamentary select committee on controversial amnesty scheme

Henry McDonald
The Guardian
3 Sept 2014

The Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, is giving evidence to a parliamentary committee on a secret controversial scheme to allow IRA fugitives to return home, which one unionist MP claims she will rescind as null and void.

Villiers will outline the government's position on the On-the-run scheme, which a judge ruled was not an amnesty for past crimes related to the Troubles.

About 200 IRA members who had fled to the Irish Republic or further afield to escape prosecution hold "letters of comfort", which Tony Blair's government drew up during the final phase of the peace process.

The existence of the letters to some of the IRA's most wanted emerged during the trial of John Downey, a convicted IRA member, earlier this year. Downey stood accused of being behind the 1982 Hyde Park bombings. The trial against Downey, 62, from Donegal, collapsed when his legal team produced one of the letters, which stated that the police were no longer seeking him for any Troubles-related crimes.

In response to unionist anger over the clandestine scheme drawn up between the Blair government and Sinn Féin, David Cameron announced a judicial inquiry into the deal.

Lady Justice Hallett, who led the inquiry, found serious failings in the OTR administrative scheme, but also that letters sent to terrorism suspects "did not amount to an amnesty".

Villiers will speak about the scheme on Wednesday to the Northern Ireland select committee at Westminster.

As well as Downey, there are other leading republican fugitives who were given "letters of comfort" from the then Labour government.

These include Rita O'Hare, who is wanted in connection with attacks on British troops in the early 1970s and once ran Sinn Féin's office in Washington.

Other OTRs are Owen Carron, the former Sinn Féin MP who succeeded Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone after the hunger striker's death in 1981, and two men wanted in connection with the murder of garda Gerry McCabe in the Irish Republic in 1996, one of whom lives in Latin America.

One unionist MP, Jeffrey Donaldson of the Democratic Unionist party, claimed on Wednesday that Villiers will announce the scheme is null and void.

The Lagan Valley MP said: "We have made it clear all along that these letters were unacceptable and called on the secretary of state to rescind them. It's unacceptable in a democratic society that anyone could be deemed in any sense to be above the law in terms of their involvement in terrorist activity.

"We hope that the NIO [Northern Ireland Office] will send out a very clear message that victims are entitled to justice and there is no question of an amnesty being granted for a terrorist crime."