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LAST UPDATE | 29 Apr
FAMILY MEMBERS OF the ten people killed in the Kingsmill massacre in Co Armagh have said that they feel “totally vindicated” after a long-awaited report found failures in the original police investigation of the incident.
Ten Protestant men were shot dead when republican gunmen posing as British soldiers ordered them off a minibus on their way home from work outside the village of Kingsmill in Co Armagh in January 1976.
The killers asked the occupants of the bus their religion before opening fire. The only Catholic on board was ordered to run away before the shooting started.
Of the 11 Protestants who remained on the roadside, one man, Alan Black, survived, despite being shot 18 times.
In a report published today, Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson examined the original Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) investigation into the crime following complaints by bereaved relatives and the sole survivor of the attack Alan Black.
In her report, Anderson found that complaints against the RUC were in large part “legitimate and justified”.
The Ombudsman said that she recognised the “intense pressure and strain” facing RUC officers in 1976.
She identified a series of failings by the RUC in the investigation, including a failure to arrest and interview suspects.
Anderson also found a failure to exploit ballistic links with other attacks in which the same weapons were used.
She said there were also missed investigative opportunities and inadequacies in areas such as forensics, fingerprints and palm prints, and witness inquiries.
“By today’s standards, the investigative resources available were wholly insufficient to deal with an enquiry the size of the Kingsmill investigation,” Anderson said.
“The situation was exacerbated by a backdrop of multiple terrorist attacks in the South Armagh and South Down areas that stretched the already limited investigative resources available even further,” she added.
According to Anderson’s report, the detective leading the investigation “had a team of eight to assist him” in investigating ten murders and an attempted murder, which was supplemented for only a matter of weeks by two teams of about eight to ten detectives from the RUC’s Regional Crime Squad.
“This was entirely inadequate,” Anderson said.
No one has ever been convicted of the murders.
The Provisional IRA long denied responsibility for the sectarian killings, with the attack instead claimed by a little-known paramilitary group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force.
That group was long viewed as a front for the IRA, which was supposedly on ceasefire at the time.
Last year, a coroner agreed with that assessment and, delivering his findings in a long-running inquest, ruled that the massacre was an “overtly sectarian attack by the IRA”.
Survivor Alan Black, who was shot 18 times in the Kingsmill attack, said he felt “vindicated” by the ombudsman’s report today.
“Back in the day, in the ‘70s, a policeman would put on his uniform in the morning not knowing if he’s going to come home that night. So I’ve got nothing but respect for them,” Black told reporters outside the Police Ombudsman’s offices in Belfast.
“But this investigation, it points to something like the Keystone Cops and that’s all to do with the police handing their notes to their superiors, who hands them on, who hands them on, who then says ‘No, we can’t go down that road’.”
He added: “We feel totally vindicated in making the complaint and we feel backed up by the ombudsman this far.”
Black said the “death cries of his friends” remained his motivation in continuing to press for justice and truth.
“Every time a door slammed, we tried to open another door with the help of these people here (his legal team), and another door did open,” he said.
“So we just had to keep going and going and going. At times you get very low. But I owe a big debt to the boys that died. I’m not stopping.”
Karen Armstrong, whose brother John McConville was killed in the Kingsmill attack, questioned why police “walked away” from the investigation.
“I think the point of the matter here is that the ombudsman has totally agreed with everything that we have said in our complaint,” she said.
“It’s all in here (the report), you know, that basic, basic police work wasn’t completed and wasn’t finished.
“We’ve been down this road for a long time and, to be honest, it’s been tough, but we’ve had a lot of time to think, what was the reason behind that? Why did they not even make more of an effort to find out who was responsible for these murders?
“And the answer is, and we’ve had time to think about it, we went through the police files as a family ourselves and scrutinised it, and basically it didn’t happen. They walked away. They walked away from this investigation for reasons that have yet to be made public.”
The 10 men who died were Robert Chambers, 18, John Bryans, 46, Reginald Chapman, 29, Walter Chapman, 35, Robert Freeburn, 50, Joseph Lemmon, 46, John McConville, 20, James McWhirter, 58, Robert Walker, 46, and Kenneth Worton, 24.
In a statement this evening, PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said he wanted to “acknowledge the pain and suffering that the families and loved ones continue to feel”.
“Their unimaginable suffering has been compounded by the lack of the fulsome and effective investigation that everyone would want and that they deserve,” he added.
Boutcher said the Police Ombudsman has concluded that the “failings took place against a backdrop of what she describes as ‘wholly insufficient’ resources to deal with an enquiry the size of the Kingsmill investigation”.
“Areas of the report make for uncomfortable reading and I note the failings the Police Ombudsman has identified in the original investigation,” said Boutcher.
He added: “It is important to note that the Ombudsman found no intelligence that could have forewarned of, or allowed police to prevent, the murders nor did it identify any intelligence that indicated a direct threat to any of the deceased or injured.
“I am determined to do all I can to provide these remarkable families with the acknowledgement they deserve and the answers they crave.”
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