Daily Ireland, 3 May 2006:

 

Collusion website
Group is seeking independent judicial inquiry into state killings
by Mick Hall
Campaigners launched a website in Belfast yesterday designed to help highlight and compile accounts of state collusion in murders in Ireland over the past 35 years. An Fhírinne unveiled details of the new site at the Rodaí Mac Corlaí Club in west Belfast. The group, which was set up four years ago, hopes that the initiative will prompt more relatives to come forward with information about the deaths of their loved ones where there has been evidence of collusion. An Fhírinne believes that state-sponsored murder was a formal, politically sanctioned tactic by the British government and that the security apparatus established to facilitate this still exists today. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and relatives of collusion victims addressed yesterday’s gathering. Jimmy Sharkey — the nephew of Séamus Ludlow, who was murdered in May 1976 — told the gathering that the Irish government had treated his uncle’s death as “irrelevant”. Mr Ludlow (46) had been walking home from a local bar in Dundalk, Co Louth, when loyalists abducted him and shot him dead. It has been claimed that gardaí and Irish government ministers knew the identities of those responsible but declined to take action in order to protect a British agent involved in the murder. Mr Sharkey said: “We are here because, 30 years ago, my uncle was killed and, for a large part of that 30 years, part of our family were told by the authorities in the Republic that the IRA had killed him, that he was an informer and that members of our own family were implicated in his killing. “That belief lingered on for almost 20 years. “We have found out since that, within a very short period of time – within two years of Séamus having been killed – the Southern authorities knew full well who killed him and that members of the British army were involved in the killing but they chose to cover that up completely. “In fact, the investigation came to an abrupt end after six weeks and everybody wondered at the time what it was all about, but we know now that there was collusion.” The Ludlow family is calling on the Irish government to launch a full public inquiry into the murder, a move that the government has so far resisted. Gerry Adams congratulated those involved in launching the website. He paid tribute to the courage of the Ludlow family in campaigning for an inquiry on the 30th anniversary of Séamus Ludlow’s death. He said collusion and state killings had been “a matter of administrative practice in the North” and had been “authorised at the highest political levels”. “While there have been many deaths arising out of the conflict, An Fhírinne seeks to draw attention to those carried out by state forces as well as those involving collusion between state forces and unionist paramilitaries. “For the families of state violence and collusion, there has been the trauma of dealing with the loss of a loved one but their grief has been compounded by the lies and deceit of the state in covering up the truth of these events. “Many of these families are only now beginning to learn of the role collusion played in the murder of a relative. “An Fhírinne’s objective is to secure an international, independent public judicial inquiry into collusion and state killings. This is an enormous challenge,” said Mr Adams.

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