Protect veterans from legacy probes, says former government minister as he slams ‘demonstrably wrong’ Clonoe verdict on IRA gang deaths

As published by the Belfast News Letter

British veterans should be given legal protection against legacy probes, a former government minister has said, while attacking the controversial Clonoe case verdict.
Sir David Davis MP, a minister in Theresa May’s government, said it would have been “collective suicide” for SAS men confronting an armed IRA gang in 1992 to have first verbally challenged them.

Speaking in the House of Commons today (2nd), he went on to label a coroner’s verdict two months ago that the SAS weren’t justified in using lethal force “demonstrably wrong” – and called for veteran British soldiers to be legally protected from legacy cases.

“These are men who served our country with honour, heroism of skill, sometimes in the face of the most incredible danger,” he said. “They are now, no doubt, hoping for well-earned peaceful retirement, not a future of endless stress and psychological torture.

“If the government leaves them open to persecution, it will, frankly, be shameful, and only further the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland.”

On February 16, 1992, four IRA gang members were killed around 15 minutes after pumping 30 rounds of armour-piercing tracer ammunition from a Soviet-made heavy machine gun into a Coalisland police station.

Still armed with assault rifles and speeding their hijacked lorry into a church car park in the nearby village of Clonoe, where their getaway vehicles were stashed, the paramilitaries were surprised by an SAS squad waiting in ambush and shot dead.

A coroner’s recent verdict that soldiers could not have honestly believed that using lethal force was necessary has left the spectre of criminal prosecutions hanging over the British soldiers who were involved in the ambush, earning the ire of many politicians.

Said Sir David: “Remember, this was happening on a dark February night at about 10.45pm. Issuing a challenge under these circumstances could have amounted to collective suicide.

“Circumstances like this are precisely why the yellow card rules allow the soldier to fire without challenge when the danger is too great.

“Indeed, I find it hard to imagine a more clear cut case which allows firing without challenge than the one we see here.”

Going on to welcome Ministry of Defence plans to seek a judicial review of the Clonoe inquiry, he said: “Even if they win, we must put in place statutory protection for our soldiers.”

Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who served in Northern Ireland with the Scots Guards, said: “We have a duty of protection for those who put their lives on the line – to protect our freedoms and our justice – to make sure that it’s fair.

“If we forget them for any moment, then we are not worthy of being here for they do not have a voice and they are not able to say ‘no’ when they’re ordered into situations where they may die.

“No other army in the world could have done what they did in Northern Ireland, what we did, that put up with so much and restrained ourselves with such dignity.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn confirmed the Ministry of Defence has written to the coroner outlining its intention to apply for a judicial review, stating the ministry feels the verdict doesn’t properly reflect “the context of the incident” or of the armed forces during the Troubles.