Still more questions than answers 27 years after brutal killing of Brown
THERE were plenty of poignant scenes in Trevor Briney’s excellent Death of a GAA chairman, which can still be viewed on the RTÉ player. But among the most touching footage was Séamus Heaney coming back to his native Bellaghy as the Nobel Laureate.
It was, of course, to the local GAA club that the world-famous poet came home to celebrate his award, and Seán Brown was master of ceremonies that evening.
A few months later, Brown had been killed in one of the most senseless murders in the 30 years of senseless killing that was the Troubles.
Heaney was in Greece when he heard what had happened to his friend and he penned a powerful tribute that was published in The Irish News: ‘He was a man of integrity and goodwill… he represented something better than we have grown used to, something not quite covered by the word reconciliation…this was more like a purification, a release from what the Greeks call the miasma, the stain of spilled blood.’
On May 12th 1997, the 61-yearold chairman of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones was locking up the gates of the clubhouse, as he did most nights, when he was abducted and killed by loyalists. He was shot six times in the head and driven 12 miles away to Randalstown in Antrim, where his body was dumped next to his burning car.
It was a killing that shocked this island and beyond. Thenup
Taoiseach John Bruton called it ‘a sectarian outrage.’ New Labour, which had just come to power in Britain, issued a statement condemning the murder as ‘a pointless and barbaric act’. On behalf of the GAA, then-President Joe McDonagh claimed it was ‘outlandish and outrageous’.
There is a Seán Brown in every GAA club in the country. Indeed, every soccer or rugby club or any sports club. They are the ones who put up the nets, who paint the lines, the last ones to leave. That night, he was locking the gates an hour later than usual because the weekly committee meeting had been delayed by a rescheduled league match.
And, perhaps, that is why Brown’s murder shocked Ireland to the core. It’s probably the reason that he was targeted by his killers that night because he was someone that so many of us can relate to, a pillar of the Bellaghy community who had friends on both sides of the divide.
Birney does a good job of recreating how much of a powder keg the North was in May 1997. There were contentious parades across the province, while we heard the Reverend Willie McCrea warning that people ‘will reap a bitter harvest’ after the DUP politician lost his mid-Ulster seat at Westminster to Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, just 10 days before Brown was murdered.
The details of the night are jarring. Bridie Brown, Seán’s widow, who even now hasn’t given
searching for answers, recalls how she went out with a torch at half two in the morning when her husband hadn’t come home.
And she remembers how she knew what had happened when she saw two RUC men go door to door a few hours later.
The casual cruelty of those police officers was captured by one of them saying to Brown’s teenage daughter Claire ‘what are you crying for?’ when she burst into tears after realising something had happened to her father.
As a young reporter many moons ago, I was sent to Bellaghy for a day and night, to provide a dispatch before an All-Ireland club semi-final. It had been less than four years since their chairman had been killed, but the team had channelled their hurt and grief into winning a county and Ulster title.
Even though the club were still coming to terms with what had happened, they couldn’t have been more welcoming. I met Brown’s sons, Damian and Seán, who were searching for answers.
As Claire pointed out in the documentary, Damian attended ‘something like 30 preliminary hearings’ but it took until last year – 26 years after the murder – for an inquest to finally be established. Damian had a brain tumour and passed away 18 months ago, and his family wonder if the stress associated with the search for answers into his father’s death played a part in his illness.
The inquest left more questions than answers. The family received page after page of redacted files. There were five Public Interest Immunity forms sent in to stop the release of information, three from MI5, one from the Crown and one from the PSNI.
The coroner did reveal some of the file, including that the chief suspect, LVF paramilitary Mark Fulton, was under surveillance on the day of the murder. And, yet, the security footage from Toome RUC station, one of the most heavily fortified in the North, vanished. Another suspect was said to have been a serving member of the Royal Irish Regiment. And the involvement of security forces was all but confirmed when the coroner revealed that, among the 25 suspects, ‘several were agents of the state.’ Damian died without ever discovering the truth, and if the British government has its way, nobody will ever know who killed Seán Brown. This coming Wednesday, Westminster’s controversial Troubles Legacy Act comes into effect, bringing to an end ongoing inquests such as that into the murder of Brown. ‘On the first of May, justice dies,’ proclaims Niall Murphy, Brown’s family solicitor, at one point in the documentary. And it is hard not to agree. GAA President Jarlath Burns has promised to continue to support the Brown family, and this impressive work will help keep their fight in the spotlight. At one point in the documentary, Brown’s daughter Siobhán says, ‘What did my Daddy ever do to anyone that would involve that many people wanting to have a reason to kill him? Or knew something about why he was going to be murdered?’ Almost 27 years on, the family is still waiting for those answers.