When informers lie down with police, we wake up to mayhem

ALOT of people were supping with the devil in Northern Ireland during the slaughter that went on there for more than three decades.

Notions of right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral were compromised and blurred in a hideous mixture of wickedness and circumstance.

Alex Gibney’s shocking documentary, No Stone Unturned, on the UVF massacre of six men in the Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co. Down, on June 18, 1994, was broadcast this week by RTÉ. The men were shot in the back, minutes after Ray Houghton put the ball in the Italian net, paving the way to a historic Irish victory in the World Cup at the Giants Stadium, New Jersey.

The unspeakable terror unleashed by organised mass murderers in the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries is well known.

Less well known is how the police and other elements of the security services under the command and control of the British also subverted law and order by either direct involvement in terrorism or collusion with those actually carrying out the atrocities. In Loughinisland it was collusion.

Almost immediately after the killings, RUC investigators were aware of who carried out the murders.

UNUSUALLY, they also had the weapons and the car used in the crime, plus a trove of other evidential material contained in a bag discarded by the killers nearby. Yet, despite all that, nobody has ever been brought to justice. No Stone Unturned calmly lifted the veil of secrecy that obscures the role security forces played in the Northern conflict. It underlined the stark dilemma faced by police everywhere when it comes to confronting well organised and motivated killers determined to continue the bloodletting for the long term.

To defeat terror, police need informers. In such circumstances, the most valuable informers are those most involved in crime.

The documentary made clear how informers would have been rendered useless to police if they couldn’t carry on as real participants in planning for, or actually taking part in, murder and mayhem.

Therein lies the appalling dilemma which captures the utterly brutal logic that inevitably results in disaster and injustice.

In the case of Northern Ireland, the security forces turned a blind eye to Loyalist paramilitaries importing sophisticated weaponry which they must have known would end up killing innocent people.

That’s precisely what happened in Loughinisland. One of the guns used in the murders was traced back to an arms importation about which the security forces were fully aware.

Further involvement of British state agencies in the cover-up and collusion before and after the massacre is made clear by the ‘loss’ of the killers’ getaway car, which was scrapped, the destruction of police notes because of ‘asbestos contamination’ and the entirely useless interrogations of suspects by police.

IT cannot be regarded as a coincidence that one of the killers was an informer, another a British soldier. Loughinisland is a gross example of the ‘deep state’ in action – where elements of the security services, protected by the political ‘higher-ups’ with even more to lose, conspire with killers and criminals against a common enemy.

Security forces in the North needed loyalist psychopaths and informers for attacks on the IRA, or their supporters. Death by proxy, but death all the same.

Principles that underpin the rule of law were pushed to one side, even where innocent people were ruthlessly gunned down as they enjoyed a game of football on the television.

And when the killing stops, the ‘deep state’ can never allow the truth to emerge.

It doesn’t matter in the slightest that the people who suffer the most are the families of the innocent men sent to early graves.

Terrorism contaminates everything it touches. Including the socalled forces of law and order.