Same Gang Behind 100 Murders
Derry Journal

Tuesday 1st June 2004

A SPOKESPERSON for the Derry based human rights group the Pat Finucane Centre has said that the same loyalist gang could be responsible for as many as 100 murders in the area known as the 'Murder triangle'.

The revelation came as an international delegation arrived here to look into allegations of collusion, the delegation has been invited by to Derry by the Pat Finucane Centre.

The spokesperson said: "We have been researching the activities of a group operating in the Murder Triangle for some years and the full extent of the links, both ballistically and through personnel, is shocking beyond belief.

"The work of the international delegation which has come to probe allegations of collusion will also focus on linked attacks including; the murders of Patrick Falls, Patrick Connolly, John Francis Green, the Miami Showband ambush, the bomb attacks at Killyliss and Castleblaney and Mc Ardles Bar in Crossmaglen and the gun attack on the Eagle Bar in Charlemont.

"The list goes on. In all we believe that over 100 deaths can be traced back to permutations of the same gang."

The human rights group were speaking as an international delegation arrived in the North to probe allegations of collusion highlighted in a BBC 'Spotlight' Programme.

The allegations concern the activities of the so-called Glenanne group who have been linked to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and a series of murders in Armagh, Tyrone and the border counties in the 1970s.

The delegation will meet privately with families who have lost relatives and meetings have been requested with the authorities North and South of the border.

Among the cases featured in the Spotlight programme which the delegation will scrutinise are the multiple murders of members of the O'Dowd and Reavey families, the bomb and gun attacks on Donnelly's Bar, Silverbridge, the Rock Bar, Granemore, the murders of two GAA supporters at Altnamackin and the bomb attack on Kay's Tavern, Dundalk.

The delegation members are Piers Pigou, a former investigator with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a member of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and advisor to the East Timor Commission;

Susie Kemp, a barrister who was the Legal Director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Rights Action in Guatemala and prepared cases for the truth commission in that county;

Steve Sawyer, a former prosecutor and legal counsel to the Centre for International Human Rights at North Western University in Chicago.

The delegation will be led by Professor Douglass Cassel, President of the Board of Directors of the Justice Studies Centre of the Americas, and Director for the Centre for Human Rights in Chicago. He has served as consultant on human rights to the United Nations, the Organisation of American States, the United States Department of State and the Ford Foundation.

The delegation which will hold private hearings, will spend two weeks in Ireland and will publish a report later in the year which will be provided to the two governments.

Some of those named in the BBC programme are also being invited to meet the delegation.