UK PM: ‘No blanket amnesty’ for Northern Ireland crimes
The UK government has abandoned plans to end all prosecutions related to the Northern Ireland conflict, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a newspaper article on Monday, instead promising immunity to those who cooperate.
The government in July last year announced a plan to end prosecutions related to the conflict, which left 3,500 people dead over three decades, but it was condemned by all sides as an “amnesty”.
“We have listened to many people in recent months and reflected on what we heard,” Johnson wrote in Monday’s BELFAST TELEGRAPH, ahead of a visit to Northern Ireland to urge the formation of a power-sharing executive.
“Dealing with the past will still require difficult decisions but there will be no blanket amnesty,” he wrote.
“Immunity will only be available to those who cooperate and prosecutions could follow for those who do not.”
The proposals “to deal with the legacy of the past” will be put to parliament this week, Johnson wrote.
The Good Friday peace agreement was signed in 1998, ending the conflict, but tensions remain over the potential prosecution of British troops and paramilitaries alike.
Families of those killed by the armed forces say they have been denied justice against soldiers representing the authority of the state.
Meanwhile, Johnson renewed British threats to break a Brexit agreement with the European Union, blaming it for a political crisis that’s blocking the formation of a new government in Northern Ireland.
Ahead of a visit to Belfast, Johnson said there would be “a necessity to act” if the EU doesn’t agree to overhaul post-brexit trade rules that he says are destabilising Northern Ireland’s delicate political balance.
Voters in Northern Ireland elected a new Assembly this month, in a vote that saw Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein win the most seats. It was the first time a party that seeks union with the Republic of Ireland has won an election in the bastion of Protestant unionist power.
The Democratic Unionist Party came second and is refusing to form a government, or even allow the assembly to sit, until Johnson’s government scraps postbrexit checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. — afp, ap