How a string of blunders dashed the hopes of grieving families
The horror of what happened to Anthony Daly, Roy Bright, Simon Tipper and Jeffrey Young when an IRA bomb tore through the Blues and Royals as they rode to the Changing of the Guard in July 1982 has haunted their families ever since.
So when it was announced in 2013 that John Downey had been arrested and would stand trial for their murder they hoped that their loved ones would finally receive some measure of justice.
But those hopes were dashed in February last year, when the case collapsed following a series of blunders and he walked free.
In a statement the families said: “The news has left us all feeling devastatingly let down. The end result is that the opportunity for the full chain of those terrible events will never be put in the public domain for justice to be seen to be done.”
Downey had been accused of being part of the IRA “active service unit” which targeted the Blues and Royals as they rode through Hyde Park, killing Cpl Bright, 36, Lt Daly, 23, Trooper Tipper, 19, and L/Cpl Young, also 19.
Seven horses were also killed and 31 people injured.
Both detectives and the Crown Prosecution Service thought they stood a good chance of securing Downey’s conviction.
After the bombing he had moved between republican safe houses, but more recently lived openly in the Irish Republic, at one stage running an oyster farm and rearing horses in Donegal.
Yet he was identified as a suspect just a month after the Hyde Park attack, when his fingerprints were found on a ticket from a car park where the IRA stored the Morris Marina used in the attack.
Downey — who was convicted of IRA membership in May 1974, and was also wanted in connection with the murder of two Ulster Defence Regiment members in 1972 — was also suspected of being behind a second explosion in Regent’s Park, hours after the Hyde Park bombing, which killed seven bandsmen from the Royal Green Jackets. He was eventually arrested at Gatwick Airport in May 2013, as he was about to board a flight to Greece.
But just as his trial was set to begin it collapsed. Mr Justice Sweeney threw out the case after Downey’s lawyers disclosed that seven years earlier their client had received a “letter of assurance” that he was not wanted in the UK and any attempt to put him on trial was an “abuse of process”.
The letter — one of 200 received by “On The Run” IRA suspects as part of the peace process brokered by Tony Blair and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams — was sent on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office. In Downey’s case it provided reassurance that he could travel to visit his son and grandchild in Canada.
But the letter should never have been sent, because at the time there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest issued by the Metropolitan Police in 1983.
For Sinn Fein — still countering accusations from republican dissidents that its decision to sign up to the Good Friday agreement was a betrayal of the struggle for a united Ireland — the collapse of the trial was a victory.
Francie Molloy, Sinn Fein MP for Mid Ulster, said Downey’s arrest had been in breach of the commitments not to pursue the OTRs.
The case was to cast a long shadow over Mr Blair’s legacy and what was arguably one of his most enduring achievements — bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
Many agreed, and continue to agree, with Peter Robinson, the DUP First Minister of the province, when he claimed that wanted terrorist suspects had been given a “get out of jail free card” by Mr Blair.
Judith Jenkins, 53, the widow of L/Cpl Young, put it even more bluntly. “We all had our hopes raised and this has been a total shock. His case has made a mockery of the criminal justice system.”
Mr Blair would tell the parliamentary committee on Northern Ireland that without the OTR letters the peace process would have collapsed.
However, the committee’s judgment, when it publishes its report into the matter this week, is expected to be rather more critical of the former prime minister’s handling of the issue.