Northern Ireland Pursuit ends in a fatality

[Standard Dave]

The Police in Northern Ireland it would appear are under presure to explain this use of force in halting a pursuit of a stolen car.

http://www.ntlworld.com/news/story_u...oryid=27212212

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4915334.stm

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...519220,00.html

[Garda]

Yeah theres demands for suspensions until the investigation is carried out.

Funny thing is the Ombudsmans office up there is being investigated by the police over a shooting so they have not proven too be oh so great have they?

And why am I a fascist because I think armed cops are armed for a reason and joyriders deserve no pity? Especially when you consider whereit is and the past experience. Its not so long ago the bullets would have been military and the targets carrying a bomb or a few armalites.

[Falcata]

Doesn't seem 15 years ago..since we had this;

http://www.1in12.go-legend.net/publi...es98/clegg.htm

[Garda]

No but please, can you find a better source to point too?

1. Thats an anarchist site which used hearsay evidence and still claims hes guilty (the courts only right when they agree)
2. Soldiers should not have been deployed the way they were in NI.

[Falcata]

Garda,

I just searched on Lee Clegg....got that link...

I know several ex members of the RUC, who were only too pleased to see the British armed forces in 1969....so perhaps both you and I aren't best place to argue that on the level...

[Garda]

Maybe so but my point isnt that it was OTT but that the RUC should have been armed, equiped, trainied and manned to do that job.

Its hard to believe that the RUC was unarmed and only got weapons back in the 60s, 69 or thereabouts I think.

[Standard Dave]

I think I agree with both of you

The Lee Clegg article is a bit biased toward the all british soldiers are murders point of view S1 didn't pick it for that purpose i'm sure knowing his background.

I tried an internet search and couldn't find anything that didn't look like it was written by the PIRA.

Soldiers had no involvement in the latest one the PSNI did it all themselves maybe we have moved on in 15 years

[Garda]

The BBC story is still floating around but this one seems to be the most centered as it gives both sides.

Lets not forget that the car WAS stolen so the people in it werent honest decent people.

You will also note the shinners once again calling for jury trials, oh I wonder why????

Paratrooper Lee Clegg cleared of last charge over death of teenagers


Northern Ireland: special report

Nicholas Watt in Belfast
Tuesday February 1, 2000
The Guardian

Paratrooper Lee Clegg was finally cleared yesterday of criminal wrongdoing over the shooting of two teenage joyriders in west Belfast in 1990, ending a lengthy legal battle.
Clegg said last night that he was "overwhelmed" after the Northern Ireland court of appeal overturned a conviction for wounding Martin Peake, who died in the shooting.

The judgment removed the last outstanding charge against Clegg, 31, who was acquitted at a retrial last year of murdering Karen Reilly, who was a passenger in the joyrider's car.

Clegg was originally convicted in 1993 at Belfast crown court of murdering Miss Reilly, 18, and wounding Mr Peake, 17. The two victims were shot by an army patrol on Glen Road in west Belfast in September 1990 when their stolen Vauxhall Astra raced through a security checkpoint.

The paratrooper, who fired four shots at the car, said he opened fire because he feared for the safety of his fellow soldiers. The judge at his original trial convicted Clegg of murder because he fired his final shot through the back of the car when the joyriders no longer presented a threat to the paratroopers.

The Clegg case became one of the most politically sensitive in Northern Ireland when the Daily Mail launched a campaign in 1994 to clear his name.

Under pressure from Tory backbenchers, the then Northern Ireland secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, used his powers to free Clegg on licence in 1995, sparking widespread rioting in nationalist areas.

The court of appeal granted Clegg a retrial after new ballistics evidence challenged the evidence used in his original trial. Clegg was acquitted of murdering Miss Reilly last year but was again found guilty of the offence against Mr Peake.

In yesterday's 36-page judgment, read out by Northern Ireland's lord chief justice, Sir Robert Carswell, Clegg was cleared of wounding Peake because of unreliable evidence from an RUC constable.

The judgment said: "In these circumstances we consider that the evidence upon which the conviction has to stand is frail and gives rise to an element of doubt in our minds whether it is being sufficiently clearly proved that the appellant did discharge a shot after the car when it had passed his position."

The judgment attacked the "highly discreditable behaviour" of the paratroopers who were "undoubtedly guilty" of the shootings.

However, it added: "Sympathy for the families of Karen Reilly and Martin Peake in their tragic loss cannot be allowed to deflect a court from reaching a decision based on the law and the facts proved in evidence."

An ecstatic Clegg said last night that he did not want to be triumphalist. "At the end of the day, the shooting was a tragedy that could have been avoided," he said. "Two young people lost their lives needlessly and this fact will remain with me long after the case has been forgotten about."

His mother, Wynne Johnson, welcomed the judgment as the end of a nine-year nightmare for the family. "It's brilliant," she said. "That's it - the ball's finally stopped rolling after more than nine years."

The Sinn Fein president and Belfast West MP, Gerry Adams, condemned the judgment as a "dreadful verdict".

"This is a grievous insult to the people of west Belfast and to the victims' families," he said.

Mr Adams called for the scrapping of Northern Ireland's non-jury Diplock courts and for a wholesale reform of the province's judicial system. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_I...190513,00.html)

[Ducky]

I am amused by the phrasing of "their stolen Vauxhall Astra" It's not theirs, it's STOLEN. So instead of it reading that they stole a vehicle and tried to run down people, they're trying to make it sound as if they were just out for a lark. I swear, sometimes I hate the press.

[Garda]

ha ha ha, well spotted ducky!