Dublin Monaghan families taking legal action against Ahern

[merle haggard]

The relatives of those killed in the Dublin Monaghan bombings are to take legal action against Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the next number of weeks due to the continuance of the Irish states cover up surrounding the massacre .

If the Government fails to furnish the documents voluntarily within three weeks, victims' families will lodge a High Court discovery motion seeking to force it to hand over previously unseen, security-sensitive material about the bombings. Last March, Mr Ahern received the final report from the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and all material it received is now archived in the Department of the Taoiseach.

Ahern himself publicly used these families while first campaigning for election as Taoiseach , promising to have all the government files on the states biggest mass murder made available to their legal team to assit in their quest for a public enquiry . However shortly after being elected Ahern betrayed their trust . He announced he had viewed the states files himself and decided there was nothing in them in his opinion that could assist an enquiry therefore he was ordering they remain closed and be witheld from the families solicitors . The Dublin Monaghan families persisted in their campaign which resulted in Aherns second administration declaring all the files and their duplicates had then disappeared from their secure archives in their entirety . Every last document , consisting of thousands .

Relatives of three of the victims, including a young couple who were killed alongside their two infant children, have taken judicial review proceedings against the Government over its refusal to hold a public inquiry.

Martha O'Neill, Elizabeth O'Brien and Frank Massey claim that material amassed during the course of the investigations is critical to their High Court proceedings and have given the Government three weeks to respond or face a motion of discovery.

The categories of documents sought include:

* All documents received by the commission from the British government and any of its agencies, including MI5 and MI6, and Northern Ireland authorities.

* All garda documents found by the commission previously stated to be 'missing'.

* A full list of all persons who met or were willing to meet and assist the commission, including evidence identifying members of the gardai and Northern Ireland security forces who would be in a position to identify those involved in the bombings. The discovery action represents the most ambitious legal move by relatives of some of the victims and follows a split in the primary support group, Justice for the Forgotten, earlier this year.

In their action, the relatives of some of the 33 victims killed claim that the commission believed it had obtained documentation of a sensitive and secretive nature which included security sources and other intelligence-type material.

They also note that the commission had heard evidence from a number of "significant persons" in Ireland who had obtained newly disclosed material.

Having been regularly monitored and harassed by the state for decades without any explanation the families refuse to back down from seeking the truth . Their actions have thus far caused the state to hold the first inquests into the deaths decades later as well as holding limited enquiries within terms of reference that prevent the truth from being got at . Ahern himself has been exposed on numerous occasions as not only a liar but a hypocrite by this campaign . While informing the Dail his good friend Tony Blair was refusing to assist the Irish governemnt it could be pointed out that the Irish government itself was refusing to help any enquiry also , going so far as to claim all its files were missing . In the past the gardaí even took legal action to prevent the families from taking a case against Britain over the bombings in the international courts .
The gardai have also been exposed as being still engaged in lies and cover ups . A prime susupect identified as a result of enquiries as a man who should be sought for questioning turned out to be not only living in Dublin but in contact with the gardai on other unrelated matters , after the garda press office had claimed the man lived outisde the jurisdiction and his whereabouts were unkown to gardaí .
Aherns treatment of these people is beyond contempt . Hopefully their legal challenge will expose him and his police force for the corrupt scumbags they most definitely are . The irony of their desire to assist and facilitate a mock victims group like Willy Frazer and his paramilitary linked FAIR which honours the Dublin Monaghan bombers , while at the very same time harassing and impeding a genuine victims group unconnected to any paramilitary grouping is a point that wont be lost in the lead up to Frazers Dublin march and the gardais willingness to force it through .

[st333ve]

disgusting, the dail is like westminster with different accents.

[Halibut]

From my armchair, it'd be so much easier and truthful and right to just blow open the archives and lt it all hang out. The sooner people know the ************************e that went on the better.

[rockyracoon]

Much is common local knowledge. More is covered up. Much more evidence has been destroyed or distorted to further political careers or a particular political bias.

[Halibut]

So let's have a SA-style commission. I'd buy that for a dollar. With no attachment to any political parties in Ireland, I'd happily support it.

[rockyracoon]

So let's have a SA-style commission. I'd buy that for a dollar. With no attachment to any political parties in Ireland, I'd happily support it.

Many or most people would have no problem with a SA style review. How do you deal with lost (missing) gardaí/government/justice documents? Who runs the show? It certainly cannot be the british or Irish governments. Does one victim have hierarchy over another? Does historical context come into the equation? Is there immunity from prosecution? Does prosecution come into play if one side is declared as victims and the other instigators? This is a minefield.

I would only trust Nelson Mandela to run this enquiry.

[Molly Malone]

Halubut: People know the ************************e.
At 5.30 p.m. on May 17th 1974 three no warning car bombs exploded in central Dublin, killing 26 men, women and children and injuring and maiming hundreds of others. Ninety minutes later another bomb, planted by the Portadown Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and also made by British Intelligence exploded in Monaghan, killing a further seven innocent civilians. The day before, during the Loyalist so called 'Workers Strike' Bill Craig had threatened that the South could expect violence shortly.
One of the most horrifying things about the bombings was the Irish Government’s attitude to the victims and the survivors and their relatives. Dublin authorities were quickly aware of the names of the perpetrators – well known UVF and UDR trigger men like Billy Hanna, Jim Hanna, 'Frenchie' Merchant, UDR Corporal Robert McConnell, Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, Billy Fulton 'the fertiliser man' and their British Intelligence handlers Capt. Tony Ball and SAS Major Andy Nightingale, Bob Nairac, Fred Holroyd, Craig Smellie, and the Miami Showband murderers Harris Boyle, the Summervilles, Crozier and McDowell. The British Intelligence officer who made the Dublin bombs was probably Peter Maynard, who used UDR Capt. John Irwin to deliver them to the farm in Glenane which was, and is still owned by former RUC Reserve James Mitchell. Jackson, Davy Payne and Billy Hanna led the Dublin team and Stuart Young was one of the Monaghan bombers. The Badger is Gárda Sergeant and British double agent John McCoy. The Dublin police chief who aided and abetted in the cover up at the highest level was the infamous former Gárda commissioner Edmund Garvey. Glennie Barr, the prominent Derry UDA man, has also been implicated.

[rockyracoon]

Halubut: People know the ************************e.
At 5.30 p.m. on May 17th 1974 three no warning car bombs exploded in central Dublin, killing 26 men, women and children and injuring and maiming hundreds of others. Ninety minutes later another bomb, planted by the Portadown Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and also made by British Intelligence exploded in Monaghan, killing a further seven innocent civilians. The day before, during the Loyalist so called 'Workers Strike' Bill Craig had threatened that the South could expect violence shortly.
One of the most horrifying things about the bombings was the Irish Government’s attitude to the victims and the survivors and their relatives. Dublin authorities were quickly aware of the names of the perpetrators – well known UVF and UDR trigger men like Billy Hanna, Jim Hanna, 'Frenchie' Merchant, UDR Corporal Robert McConnell, Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, Billy Fulton 'the fertiliser man' and their British Intelligence handlers Capt. Tony Ball and SAS Major Andy Nightingale, Bob Nairac, Fred Holroyd, Craig Smellie, and the Miami Showband murderers Harris Boyle, the Summervilles, Crozier and McDowell. The British Intelligence officer who made the Dublin bombs was probably Peter Maynard, who used UDR Capt. John Irwin to deliver them to the farm in Glenane which was, and is still owned by former RUC Reserve James Mitchell. Jackson, Davy Payne and Billy Hanna led the Dublin team and Stuart Young was one of the Monaghan bombers. The Badger is Gárda Sergeant and British double agent John McCoy. The Dublin police chief who aided and abetted in the cover up at the highest level was the infamous former Gárda commissioner Edmund Garvey. Glennie Barr, the prominent Derry UDA man, has also been implicated.

There is much more.

[Halibut]

Well, after the arsed up goings-on in Donegal, I don't know how you'd deal with missing documents anywhere in the Irish system. (I can't speak for the British system) This sticks in my craw something rotten; but there maybe,.. should be,... some UN-sponsored,.. Truth & Reconcilation..damn.

[merle haggard]

A major issue must be Ahern himself and it can be determined that these documents are of use in determining what happened . Ahern claimed the documents were of no use to anyone therefore was witholding them from the families legal team and not opening up an enquiry. That would be grounds for a tribunal that would make Mahon look like the tellytubbies . Then theres the open blackmailing of other administrations during the 1980s by Garda John McCoy who went to the sunday papers and began dropping hints hed talk if the governemnt didnt close down investigations and take the pressure off him . McCoy was travelling all over the south in the company of a prime suspect in the bombings , a British intelligence officer and explosives expert . They attempted to recruit Irish army commandant Paddy Trears as an agent only months after the bombings , McCoy brought the bombing suspect to Trears home unnanounced where the approach was made . Trears reported the incident to his superiors but nothing was ever done . The gang themselves carried on attacking targets in the south for 3 years after the Dublin bombings making further attempts at mass murder unhindered by anyone despite their identities being known to authorities north and south of the border .
The apparent repeated attempts by the authorities south of the border to hinder any investigation into the states biggest mass murder are in themselves collusion in the bombings and the gangs activities . The files recent diappearance is an act of collusion in mass murder . Someone at a high level in either the gardaí or political circles is engaging in collusion as we speak . This needs urgently investigated evry bit as much as the events of 1974-77