Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
UK legislation to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s Troubles “can work”, despite legal challenges and fears it will shield security forces from prosecution, insists the senior judge charged with its implementation.
The law, passed by Britain’s parliament three months ago, scraps inquests from next May for atrocities committed during the three-decades-long conflict and offers perpetrators a conditional amnesty.
Ireland on Wednesday announced it was taking the UK to the European Court of Human Rights in a rare bid to block the legislation, which Dublin says flouts obligations underpinning the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the Troubles conflict.
The move prompted a sharp riposte from London, which called Ireland’s decision to take legal action “misguided” and said it would “continue robustly to defend the legislation”.
But Sir Declan Morgan head of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, the body set up under the new law to find answers in cases from the Troubles, said he was not concerned by Ireland’s legal move.
“Whether or not the conditional immunity provisions are compliant with the [European] Convention [on Human Rights] is entirely a matter for the courts,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “If it [immunity] is not compliant with the convention then we will not implement it.”
He said the ICRIR would “deal with the issues with the same rigour” as inquests and deliver “virtually no difference” in outcomes.
“I’m not here because it’s the only game in town,” the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and now ICRIR chief commissioner said. “I’m here because I think it can work.”
The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act has been condemned by victims’ groups, all political parties in Northern Ireland, the UN and the Council of Europe in addition to the Irish government.
Legal challenges are already under way in Belfast’s courts on behalf of victims’ families who reject the prospect of immunity from prosecution. A ruling is expected early next year, although appeals could follow.
Dublin has questioned whether the law is compatible with the Article 2 of the ECHR, which protects the right to life.
“It’s unsurprising that [victims] see this as yet another step in some way or another to deprive them of answers,” said Morgan, who has been praised for listening to victims and attempting to overcome political paralysis on legacy issues. “That is not what I’m about. I just don’t do that.”
He promised the process would deliver “an Article 2-compliant outcome”. If the act is found to flout the ECHR “we are expecting the government . . . to change it”, he added.
Britain’s opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has said a Labour government would repeal the act. But Hilary Benn, shadow Northern Ireland secretary, has acknowledged that replacement legislation would be needed.
London says realism is needed 25 years on from the Troubles, in which republican paramilitaries opposed to British rule, pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries and state security forces all committed atrocities.
More than 1,000 cases from the Troubles remain unresolved but prosecutions are difficult to secure as those involved grow old and die.
Chris Heaton-Harris, Northern Ireland secretary in the UK government, says there is no better alternative on the table. Legacy issues were included in the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, which agreed inquests should continue — but the deal was never implemented due to political squabbling.
Critics of the new act say the ICRIR’s powers are much weaker than those of the Historical Investigations Unit envisaged under Stormont House.
The act’s most controversial element is its offer of conditional immunity to perpetrators of atrocities who co-operate with the commission.
Critics say the threshold — that information provided is true “to the best of [a person’s] knowledge and belief” — is scandalously low. Rights group Amnesty International says it will block justice and let people get away with murder.
A court in Londonderry, also known as Derry, last week ruled that a former British solder, “Soldier F”, would stand trial for two murders committed when the UK’s Parachute Regiment opened fire on civilians on Bloody Sunday in 1972. The ICRIR declined to comment on the ruling.
Morgan expects the number of immunity cases to be “quite small” although he acknowledges the scepticism from the commission’s critics, and the reluctance of some victims’ families to engage with him because they “have been disappointed so many times in so many different ways”.
But he said he was “confident” there were enough people who were “sufficiently convinced” about what the ICRIR could achieve and “it is by doing what we say that we will get trust”.
Morgan cautioned that the real aim of the ICRIR was at risk of being lost amid the controversy.
“The work of this commission is information recovery,” he said. “But the objective is reconciliation.”
