WHERE’S OUR JUSTICE?
Police hound Army veterans but won’t go after the IRA killers of our soldier sons, say families
THE families of three Scottish soldiers murdered in an IRA ‘honey trap’ have blasted police for refusing to re-examine the deaths – despite conducting a ‘witch-hunt’ against Army veterans.
Fusiliers Dougald McCaughey, 23, Joseph McCaig, 18, and his brother John, 17, were killed on a remote mountain road in Northern Ireland on March 10, 1971.
The off-duty troops were drinking in Belfast bars when three men pretended to befriend them and lured them to their deaths with the promise of meeting young women at a party.
They were shot in the back of the head at close-range at White Brae in Ligoniel.
No one has faced trial for their murders, even though one IRA terrorist confessed his role in the plot and named two accomplices during a Scotland Yard-led investigation 46 years ago.
A 2012 report by Northern Ireland’s now axed Historical Enquiries Team (Het) identified four IRA terrorists as prime suspects.
Anthony Doherty – who confessed after his arrest in 1971 before breaking out of Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail – and two unnamed IRA men are understood to be living in the Republic of Ireland. The fourth alleged killer, Patrick McAdorey, was shot dead later that year.
Relatives of the three victims are launching a legal battle to bring the living alleged murderers to justice. They believe authorities should
‘Turning the legal system into a joke’
be forced to re-open the investigation – and are angry that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has snubbed calls to re-examine the case or identify the two unnamed killers.
Meanwhile, the PSNI is allowing its taxpayerfunded Legacy Investigation Branch to look at 238 ‘fatal incidents’ involving British troops in Ulster, which led to 302 deaths. Up to 1,000 retired soldiers could be investigated as potential murder or manslaughter suspects over their actions at the height of the IRA’s terror campaign. Ex-soldier Dennis Hutchings, 75, has been charged with attempted murder over the 1974 fatal shooting of an IRA suspect.
The Three Scottish Soldiers Campaign For Justice Group, co-led by Fusilier McCaughey’s cousin David, 49, has unveiled a £100,000 crowdfunding appeal so lawyers can obtain evidence and intelligence files, file submissions and, if necessary, pay for a private prosecution.
Mr McCaughey, of Rutherglen, near Glasgow, said: ‘This cannot go on any longer. The PSNI should now re-open the case to help give the families answers. They deserve justice. Instead, their killers have spent the intervening years enjoying their freedom … without fear of being prosecuted.’
Kris McGurk, 25, an ex-soldier spearheading the campaign, said: ‘It is a scandal that UK veterans are being pursued for actions they took under orders and in the fight against terrorism.
‘Yet IRA terrorists have been granted amnesties …This discrimination must end.’
Tory MP Sir Henry Bellingham, who has called on the Government to end the witch-hunt of British veterans, said: ‘There appears to be one rule for ex-servicemen and another rule for the terrorists.’
Colonel Richard Kemp, who served in Northern Ireland in the 80s and 90s, urged the Government to ‘straighten out a situation that is making the UK look like a banana republic and is turning Northern Ireland’s police and legal system into a sickening joke’.
Matthew Jury of lawyers McCue & Partners, representing the families, said: ‘Singling out veterans for prosecution, while terrorists walk free, is a gross injustice. Our troops deserve better.’
The Het report said Fusiliers McCaughey of Glasgow and the McCaigs of Ayr – serving with 1st Battalion, the Royal Highland Fusiliers – were ‘murdered in a ruthless planned ambush by the Provisional IRA’ but that there were no new lines of enquiry that could lead to identification or prosecution.
Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy, of the PSNI’s Legacy Investigation Branch, said ‘if further credible opportunities develop to further this investigation in the future, they will be considered’.
The families’ lawyers say witness statements, Doherty’s confession, his terrorist links and the fact he was seen in a car later put at the scene provide leads that could be used to pursue a prosecution. To donate, visit www.crowdjustice.org/case/three-scottish-soldiers.