During the period known as "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland, the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were accused of operating a "shoot-to-kill" policy, under which suspects were alleged to have been deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them. Such a policy was alleged to have been directed almost exclusively at suspected or actual members of Irish republican paramilitary groups. The Special Air Service (SAS) is the most high-profile of the agencies that were accused of employing this policy, as well as other British Army regiments, and the RUC.
Contents
Notable incidents alleging the use of the shoot-to-kill policy include the Loughgall ambush, Operation Flavius in Gibraltar, and an incident in Strabane. The SAS killed a total of 14 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) members at these locations.
Other high-profile incidents involving alleged shoot-to-kill incidents occurred in Belfast, Derry, East Tyrone and South Armagh. The killing of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) member Brian Robinson by undercover soldiers is notable for being the most prominent of the very few alleged "shoot-to-kill" incidents where the victim was a loyalist.
Stalker/Sampson Inquiry
On 24 May 1984 an inquiry under Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker of the Greater Manchester Police was opened into three specific cases where it was alleged that a specially trained undercover RUC team known as the "Headquarters Mobile Support Unit" had carried out a "shoot-to-kill" policy. These three cases were:
The shootings were initially investigated by other members of the RUC, and the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland decided to bring prosecutions. At the first trial, relating to the shootings of the two INLA men, Constable John Robinson admitted to having been instructed to lie in his statements, and that other witnesses had similarly altered their stories to provide justification for opening fire on Grew and Carroll. When Robinson was found not guilty, the resulting public outcry caused RUC Chief Constable John Hermon to ask John Stalker to investigate the killings.
On 5 June 1986, just before Stalker was to make his final report, he was removed from his position in charge of the inquiry. On 30 June, he was suspended from duty over allegations of association with criminals. On 22 August, he was cleared of the allegations and returned to duty, although he was not reinstated as head of the inquiry. The inquiry was taken over by Colin Sampson of the West Yorkshire Police. Its findings were never made public.
In the book Stalker, published by Stalker in 1988, the following descriptions of his investigation into the three shooting incidents appeared, concerning the McKerr, Toman and Burns shooting:
Concerning the three incidents as a whole, Stalker wrote:
According to The Times of 9 February 1988, Stalker stated that although he never found written evidence of a shoot-to-kill policy, there was a "clear understanding" that officers were expected to enforce it.
In 1990 the RUC issued a response to Stalker's book, saying that the book contained many inaccuracies and distortions and gave a misleading impression. In particular it stated, in contradiction to Stalker's assertions, that:
Criticisms were also made that Stalker had gone outside his remit to reinvestigate the shooting incidents as well as a terrorist incident on 27 October 1982 in which three police officers had been killed and that his report, when submitted, lacked the clarity and precision normally associated with criminal investigations.
The government also submitted that on 23 June 1992 Thorburn, when he withdrew a libel action against the RUC Chief Constable, made a statement in which he took the opportunity to submit publicly that he was satisfied that the RUC had not pursued a shoot-to-kill policy in 1982 and that the RUC Chief Constable had not condoned or authorised any deliberate or reckless killings by his officers. Other members of the Stalker/Sampson inquiry team also stated in June 1990 that "the Greater Manchester officers wish to stress that the Stalker/Sampson Enquiry found no evidence of a 'Shoot to Kill policy'".[5]
Court rulings
Some of the victims' families have won compensation from the Ministry of Defence following cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights against the British government. The European judges considered four separate cases between 1982 and 1992 in which 14 people were killed. They involved the deaths of 12 IRA members and two civilians (one a Sinn Féin member) by the SAS, the RUC and the loyalist Ulster Defence Association, allegedly acting in collusion with the RUC.
In the judgement the court ruled that eight armed IRA men shot dead by soldiers of an SAS unit at Loughgall, County Armagh, in 1987, and two IRA men killed by RUC officers, had their human rights violated. It said this had arisen because of the failure of the state authorities to conduct a proper investigation into the circumstances of the deaths, though the court did not rule that the use of lethal force itself was unlawful. A similar finding was brought in the case of Sinn Féin member Patrick Shanaghan, who was killed by loyalist paramilitaries. The findings were brought under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cultural impact
A number of television programmes were produced about or in reaction to specific incidents in particular or the shoot-to-kill issue in general: