New questions over 'comfort letters'

identified as similar to the Downey case”.

A source close to the inquiry said that these individuals were clearly wanted in connection with IRA attacks in England and Northern Ireland and would form the basis for potential criminal inquiries.

For the past 12 months, MPs on the Northern Ireland affairs select committee have been investigating the OTR scheme. In a report to be published on Tuesday, the committee is expected to raise questions over whether the policy of sending “comfort letters” to IRA suspects during Mr Blair’s final months in office was lawful. The government accelerated its work to process the OTR cases after he assured Mr Adams that he wanted to resolve the cases before he left Number 10.

Mr Blair has insisted that only those individuals who were genuinely not wanted by police, and were therefore not going to face trial, were sup- posed to have received OTRs. However, the select committee report is also expected to criticise the way OTRs were processed at a faster pace during Mr Blair’s final months. On Dec 28, 2006, in a confidential letter, Mr Blair told Mr Adams that the government was working on putting in place mechanisms to resolve outstanding OTR cases, including “expediting the existing administrative procedures”.

In February 2007, the PSNI began “Operation Rapid”, the code name for a review of wanted suspects. Mr Downey received his “comfort letter” in July 2007, less than a month after Mr Blair handed over his leadership to Gordon Brown.

In a statement, the PSNI said it could not give further details of the six new cases. Mr Kerr said: “The review of these cases is an ongoing process. This does involve active criminal investigations and it would therefore be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”