Plan for amnesty over `Troubles' crimes slammed

Relatives of people killed during Northern Ireland's decades of violence protested in London and Belfast on Tuesday, urging the government to drop plans to grant immunity to perpetrators of crimes committed during “the Troubles.”

The British government says its Legacy and Reconciliation bill reflects the “vanishingly small” likelihood of convicting people for decades-old crimes. If it becomes law, it will end most prosecutions for killings by both British soldiers and members of militant groups.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis told lawmakers in the House of Commons that change is needed because “the current system is broken.”

“It is delivering neither justice nor information to the vast majority of families,” he said.

More than 3,500 people died — most of them civilians — during three decades of violence, known as the Troubles. involving Irish republican and British loyalist paramilitaries and U.K. troops.

The bill calls for an independent “commission for information recovery” — loosely modelled on South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission — to investigate alleged crimes, and imposes a duty of “full disclosure” on the British government and security services. People who cooperate with the commission and reveal what they know about past crimes will be granted immunity from prosecution, and new civil claims and inquests over the Troubles will be banned.

People who refuse to speak to the commission could still be charged. The government added that condition after an earlier proposal for a blanket amnesty was rejected by all Northern Ireland's main political parties, the government of Ireland and human rights groups.

But people who lost loved ones say the law will still allow killers to get away with murder.