U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

64–523 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

THE PATTEN COMMISSION REPORT ON POLICING

IN NORTHERN IRELAND

OPEN MEETING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 24, 1999

Serial No. 106–103

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

MATT SALMON, Arizona

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

TOM CAMPBELL, California

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

PAT DANNER, Missouri

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff

KATHLEEN BERTELSEN MOAZED, Democratic Chief of Staff

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

PETER T. KING, New York

MATT SALMON, Arizona

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

GROVER JOSEPH REES, Subcommittee Staff Director

DOUGLAS C. ANDERSON, Counsel

GGARY STEPHEN COX, Democratic Staff Director

NICOLLE A. SESTRIC, Staff Associate

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

WITNESSES

The Right Honorable Chris Patten, Chairman, Independent Commission on

Policing for Northern Ireland; Accompanied by Senator Maurice Hayes ........ 4

Michael Posner, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights .... 16

Michael Finucane, Son of Patrick Finucane, Slain Defense Attorney ................. 19

Maggie Beirne, Committee on the Administration of Justice, Belfast ................ 35

Julia Hall, Northern Ireland Researcher, Human Rights Watch ........................ 39

Jane Winter, Director, British Irish Rights Watch ............................................... 44

APPENDIX

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from

The State of New Jersey, Chairman, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights ................................................................................... 00

The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress from New

York and Chairman, Committee on International Relations Committee ........ 00

Mr. Chris Patten ...................................................................................................... 00

Mr. Michael Finucane ............................................................................................. 00

Mr. Michael Posner ................................................................................................. 00

Ms. Jane Winter ...................................................................................................... 00

Ms. Maggie Beirne ................................................................................................... 00

Ms. Julia Hall .......................................................................................................... 00

Additional material submitted for the record:

Letter to Mr. Chris Patten, submitted by Rep. Gilman ....................................... 00

Excerpt from the House of Commons, submitted by Rep Gilman ....................... 00

Submission from Irish American Unity Conference ............................................. 00

Submission from The Brehon Law Society ............................................................ 00

(1)

THE PATTEN COMMISSION REPORT ON

POLICING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Friday, September 24, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL

OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS, Committee on International Relations,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:45 a.m. In Room

2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith

(chairman of the Subcommittee) Presiding.

Mr. SMITH. Let me just begin by saying that the purpose of this

public meeting is for the Subcommittee with primary jurisdiction

over human rights to review the recent publication ‘‘A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland,’’ and to hear from its principal

author, the Right Honorable Chris Patten. This report was released

on September 9 by the Independent Commission on Policing for

Northern Ireland which was established by the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.

[Copies of the report are available by contacting the Subcommittee office.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Patten, welcome to the Congress and thank you

for your generous commitment of time and talent in reviewing policing in Northern Ireland. We are grateful for your presence.

After 15 months of exhaustive study and outreach which included over 10,000 people participating in public meetings; 1,000

individuals speaking at those meetings; more than 3,000 submitting written reviews; and countless small group meetings, there is

little doubt that the Commission moved comprehensively and aggressively to pursue its mandate for ‘‘a new beginning in policing

in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and

sustaining the support of the community as a whole.’’. With over 175 recommendations for change and reform, it is our

sincerest hope that the recommendations contained within the report become the starting point, the floor, and not the ceiling, for policing reforms in Northern Ireland. This report, promising because

of the recommendations it contains, yet disappointing for the problems it chose not to tackle, must be a base from which the human

rights and policing reforms are built, rather than a high-water

mark that recedes over the next few weeks of public review.

I am encouraged by the Commission’s own plea that ‘‘the essentials of our recommendations present a package which must be implemented comprehensively. We advise in the strongest terms

against cherry-picking from this report.’’ .

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I am encouraged by the Commission’s candid admission ‘‘that policing was at the heart of many of the problems that politicians

have been unable to resolve in Northern Ireland and by the report’s

definition of policing as the protection of human rights.’’ The Commission’s stated desire to reorient policing onto an approach based

on upholding human rights is a recognition that Northern Ireland’s

police force, the RUC, has failed at protecting human rights for

Northern Ireland’s citizens for years.

Today’s public session is the fourth in a series of meetings held

by this Subcommittee as it has focused on human rights abuses in

Northern Ireland. In each of our previous proceedings, the subject

of policing and human rights abuses by the RUC was central. In

fact, next week will mark the 1-year anniversary of testimony we

received from defense attorney Rosemary Nelson who told us that

she feared the RUC, had been harassed by it, and even physically

assaulted by RUC members. She received death threats, and she

told us right from where you are sitting, Mr. Patten, that she literally feared for her life. We find it appalling that still not a single

RUC officer has been disciplined for the death threats and other

harassments that she endured.

I am disappointed that while the Commission acknowledged that

the RUC has had several officers within its ranks over the years

who have abused their position, it nevertheless declined to comment on a vetting mechanism to rid the force of those who have

committed egregious acts of abuse and violence. It is worth noting

with regret that the RUC officers who harassed Rosemary Nelson

and perhaps were connected with her assassination are still on the

job today. Even the police officers who beat David Adams while he

was in detention at Castlereagh in 1994 have never been criminally

prosecuted.

Last year, after meeting with Param Cumaraswamy, the U.N.

Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers— and he, too, came and spent some time with our Committee and

spoke again from where you sit—I know that the Members of this

Subcommittee wrote to the Commission asking that the Commission address the recommendations put forth by the Special

Rapporteur regarding RUC harassment of defense attorneys and

the establishment of a judicial inquiry in the allegation of collusion

into the murder of defense attorney Patrick Finucane. Regrettably,

the report fails to make recommendations that would curb the harassment of defense attorneys, and there is not a mention of the ongoing, still evolving implications of RUC-Special Branch complicity

in Finucane’s murder. Unless I missed something in the report,

Special Branch, long tainted with allegations of collusion, will simply merge with the Crime Branch. Perhaps you can elaborate on

that during your comments.

The Commission spent a great deal of time on recommendations

for the reductions of the size of the force and trying to correct the

imbalance, and I think that provides some very good recommendations that hopefully will be followed.

Let me just conclude by saying—and I would ask unanimous consent among my colleagues that my full comments be made a part

of the record—we do have concerns about plastic bullets and we did

note that you had recommended there be a diminution in their use

3

while other methods of crowd control are looked at. But it does

strike me that they can be used in the rest of the U.K. The hope

would be that these very lethal batons would be banned, as has

been recommended by numerous bodies, including the United Nations.

We also take note that we would have hoped the Emergency

Powers would have been done away with. You seemingly say that

and recommend that, and yet some of the verbiage that follows

seems to render that recommendation moot: Perhaps it ought to

continue ‘‘as long as there is a problem.’’ The Emergency Powers

are one of the sources, we believe, of the continued problems or

troubles in Northern Ireland, and we would hope that they would

be eliminated as well.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. I would like to yield to my good friend, the Chairman

of the Full Committee, Mr. Gilman, for any comments he might

have.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you for putting together today’s important

and timely meeting regarding some very critical events in the history of Northern Ireland. I want to welcome now Commissioner

Patten, former Chairman Patten of the Policing Commission, and

Senator Maurice Hayes, a Member of the Commission, for their

good work and constructive suggestions.

Mr. Chairman. Your tireless efforts to help put respect for

human rights and the critical role of defense counsel on top of the

agenda for the new North of Ireland are what we all want and expect under the Good Friday Accord to help bring a better understanding.

We also want to welcome Ambassador Heyman who is here with

us from the European Union, and his good staff. We are indeed fortunate to have Chairman Patten, now newly confirmed Commissioner for Exterior Relations for the European Union, who recently

rendered his final report and findings under the terms mandated

by the Good Friday Accord for a new beginning for policing in

Northern Ireland.

Few issues, day to day, impact more the lives of the people of the

north, than their relationship with local police. Police can either

serve to protect the people or be part of the problem, not the solution, in a divided community as in the north.

As our House Speaker Hastert said the day that the Patten report was issued, ‘‘Acknowledging that there is a problem is the first

step in finding a solution to that problem,’’ and the Patten report

is useful for that purpose. It has many constructive proposals. I

support the sentiments of the Speaker and have called the Patten

report a good first step. The struggle for change in policing in the

North is not over, its just begun. We now await the British Government’s full and prompt implementation of all of the Commission’s

recommendations which should be just the beginning, not the end,

of reform. I think its implementation will be whether or not this

report will be successful in the long run.

The ultimate test and real change will come when the minority

nationalist Catholic community can also call the police service its

own and reflect that support by joining the new police service in

representative numbers to its population in the community.

4

Today the RUC is a Protestant police force for one segment of the

community. Change has to come, hopefully sooner rather than

later. While Chairman Patten’s mandate was part of a new beginning for policing in the north, one cannot in good conscience ignore

the past history in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its relationship with the minority nationalist community.

We will be hearing later today from witnesses from the north

whose lives and families have been tragically impacted by the acts

of the RUC. Whether through possible collusion in the murder and

the making of threats to those defense attorneys merely charged

with securing fair play and justice for their clients, the past history

of the RUC is sadly checkered. Theirs are not the only families

touched by the RUC in one way or other. Thousands of others have

been hurt as well, including police officers and their families. We

all heard case after case in our Full Committee hearings this past

April on the RUC, and we need not recount them here today.

With that checkered past and the Patten Commission’s first step

to a new beginning to policing, we are calling on the British Government to move forward into the new and shared future of policing in the north. It can even do more. The Patten report leaves

some serious gaps that will make the new future for policing in the

north difficult: for example, not calling for weeding out the bad apples who have abused human rights in the past, and for new leadership at the top, these oversights will make the real reform hard

to bring about.

In addition, not banning police membership in sectarian associations whose very purpose goes counter to fair, impartial and responsible community policing, will also make real concrete change

very difficult.

We will be examining these and other proposals in our Committee, and I want to welcome Chairman Patten again and thank

him for a very difficult but a well done job, along with his Commission. We look forward to hearing from you, Commissioner, and our

other witnesses today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilman appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Patten, the floor is yours. We will have time for

opening statements from all the Members later on. Commissioner

Patten does have a very limited time here. We yield to him.

STATEMENT OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE CHRIS PATTEN,

CHAIRMAN, INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON POLICING FOR

NORTHERN IRELAND; ACCOMPANIED BY SENATOR MAURICE HAYES

Mr. PATTEN. First of all, thank you very much for allowing Senator Hayes and me to attend this briefing and to spend at least

some time with you this morning before I go back to what has just

become my life as a Commissioner for the European Union.

I am delighted that Maurice is able to join me. Maurice was one

of the 7 other Members of the Commission. Maurice has had a

record of public service in Northern Ireland which is second to

none. He was the ombudsman and he is now, among other things,

a Senator in Dublin. After me, he will say a few words.

5

There were 7 other Members of the Commission. We had two

Members from the United States, a distinguished police officer

from Massachusetts and a distinguished police trainer and academic from New York, and they made a major contribution to our

work, as did a number of police forces around the United States

and indeed North America as a whole.

I hope you will forgive me for beginning on a rather personal

note in talking about a report which has been denounced as wicked—as meaning that any police officer who is ever killed in the future in Northern Ireland should be on my conscience—denounced

this morning in a newspaper in London called the Daily Telegraph

as bringing an end to the rule of law.

This is the toughest job I have ever done, and I have done one

or two which were not exactly pushovers. Tough for two reasons.

The parties that were able to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, providing a prospective peace and normality and democracy

in Northern Ireland, were able to agree on the outlines of government. The one thing that they couldn’t agree on was policing. So

they called in 8 people from around the world to try to do the job

for them.

Second, why tough? To some extent, we found ourselves operating like a truth and reconciliation commission in circumstances

where sometimes—and it is understandable there seemed to be

more demand for truth and reconciliation than there was supply.

We held 40 public meetings around Northern Ireland. People said

nobody is going to go to a public meeting. Nobody goes to public

meetings these days. Well, over 10,000 people came to those public

meetings. Over 1,000 people spoke at them.

I can remember a meeting in a little village cinema in Kilkeel,

a fishing village in the shadow of the Mournes. Protestant fishing

fleet, Catholic farmers in the hinterland. We had a noisy and quite

a good meeting. At the end of it, I made the sort of speech that we

all can make terribly well as politicians about reconciliation and

healing and hope. At the end of it, after I had finished, to my consternation I saw a little lady at the back of the cinema getting up

to say something. I sat down rather nervously. She said, ‘‘Well, Mr.

Patten, I have heard what you say about reconciliation and I voted

yes in the referendum campaign, but I hope you will realize how

much more difficult that is for us here than it is for you, coming

from London. That man there murdered my son,’’ and it was true.

On both sides of the community, that is the reality in Northern Ireland. Two stories, two sets of pain, two sets of anguish.

We had an evening which began on the Garvaghy Road. I remember Robert Hamill’s sister talking to us about his murder, and

the meeting was chaired with considerable integrity and skill, difficult meeting by Rosemary Nelson. We then went down the road

to Craigavon, and we had four police widows, one after another,

telling us their stories, ending with Mrs. Graham whose husband

had the back of his head shot off, a community policeman, in 1997.

Mrs. Graham finished her remarks by saying, ‘‘You know, my husband wasn’t a Catholic, but he didn’t regard himself as a Protestant. He tried to behave like a Christian.’’ I have to say that I went

back from those two meetings that night and had the largest drink

I have ever had in my life.

6

Well, we did our best; and if anybody can do it better, welcome.

We produced a report which is unanimous. But what were our

terms of reference? To bring forward proposals to ensure that policing arrangements, including composition, recruitment, training,

culture, ethos symbols are such that a new approach, Northern Ireland has a police service that can enjoy widespread support from

and is seen as an integral part of the community as a whole.

I would be interested in how anybody could produce recommendations which came closer to meeting those terms of reference. At the center of our argument is a simple proposition derided by British newspapers like the Daily Telegraph and one or

two others, people who are more extreme in what they say about

the RUC than any serving RUC officer would ever be.

At the heart of our argument is that what has to happen in

Northern Ireland is to take the politics out of policing and to take

the police out of politics. To separate the police from what has been

for decades the most contentious political argument, that is, the nature of the State itself. The whole basis of the Agreement does

that.

What does the Agreement—what does the Agreement assert? It

says that in return for Nationalists accepting that political change

can only come through democracy, through the ballot box, establishing the primary loyalty of Nationalists and Republicans to the

democratic process, in return for that, Unionists will recognize that

Nationalists have other loyalties and are not obliged to demonstrate their primary loyalty to the institutions of the State which

they want to see changed through the democratic process.

So when it came to establishing the Northern Ireland Assembly,

to contemplating the establishment of the Northern Ireland Executive, no one has any difficulty agreeing that you can have an oath

of office which doesn’t have anything to do with loyalty to the

State. Nobody argues about a logo, an emblem for the Northern

Ireland Assembly, which has nothing to do with the contentious

emblems of a contentious State, and yet people still insist that the

police should be identified with the State in a way which is totally

contrary to practice in liberal democracies. We don’t regard in the

rest of the United Kingdom the police as an arm of the State; we

regard them as the upholders of the rule of law.

I think it is intolerable that some people should still seek to fix

the police at the center of that political argument, should still insist that the police should be a political football in Northern Ireland. Political footballs get kicked; actually, worse still in Northern

Ireland, political footballs get shot and blown up.

The best service we can do for all of the victims of violence in

Northern Ireland is to end a situation in which those who should

uphold the rule of law are directly related to the main contentious

political argument. That is why we have said what we have said

about name and emblems and so on.

Our argument is that policing is about the protection of human

rights. Now, I have been amazed that some people have contested

that proposition. But it is clearly the case that the police are there

to protect individual people’s human rights, to exercise their own

powers in a way which recognizes other people’s human rights.

7

Also we have to recognize that the police have human rights as

well, which have to be protected.

We have suggested a whole structure for ensuring that there is

democratic accountability for policing in Northern Ireland, though

it will obviously depend crucially on what happens to the institutions of government proposed in the Good Friday Agreement.We

have put forward imaginative and wide-ranging proposals on their

management, on training and on structure.

Perhaps I can touch on two issues since you have mentioned

them. One, the Special Branch; and two, public order policing.

On the Special Branch, we have argued that while it is very important that Northern Ireland that the police service in Northern

Ireland—has an adequate counterterrorist capacity, we don’t think

that the present size of the Special Branch is easy to justify. We

don’t think that the structure of the Special Branch makes sense.

We think that the Special Branch should be treated in the same

way as happens in London or most British police forces, or the

Garda, for that matter, and that Special Branch functions and capacities are brigaded with those involved in the fight against crime.

It is going to be particularly important because in a more peaceful, secure environment, which we will look forward to, I think

Northern Ireland may well face bigger problems in the areas of organized crime and drug-running and so on.

The other thing that we have proposed is that there should be

a senior judicial figure as a commissioner responsible for the oversight of all covert policing—surveillance, intercepts, use of informants—and that there should be a complaints tribunal to which people can go if they feel that their civil liberties have been infringed

by covert policing operations.

That would put Northern Ireland ahead—though I think change

will happen in Great Britain as well—ahead of the rest of the

United Kingdom in ensuring that our position is entirely in line

with the European Convention on Human Rights.

On plastic baton rounds. Well, we have, as you know, proposed

a more restrictive regime for the use of plastic baton rounds, but

much as we would have liked to have done so, we have not been

able to argue that plastic baton rounds should be completely done

away with. Why? Because during our hearings, a police officer was

killed with a blast bomb by loyalist thugs in policing a public order

demonstration. Why? because police officers have to contend with

blast bombs and petrol bombs when they are policing public order

demonstrations.

I totally accept, as I said, closer regulation of the use of plastic

baton rounds, but when we said to some senior American police officers ‘‘What would you do if people threw petrol bombs at you?

‘‘They said we would use live rounds.’’ I think it is important that

there should be less lethal equipment available to policing before

they have to do that.

We have argued for more investment in technology of other sorts

of public order policing. We have argued for more investment in

water cannons. But, alas, much as I would liked to have done so,

I did not feel that I could put my name to a report which completely removed plastic baton rounds, and particularly as we were

8

writing within months of the police in the Netherlands, in Rotter

Dam, when facing a football riot, using live rounds to cope with it.

I think that there are two other issues that I would like to touch

on this morning before concluding my remarks:

The first. I think it is very important that the new police service

in Northern Ireland should not be isolated, should not be cutoff

from the rest of the world. We have said a good deal in our report

about cooperation with the Garda Siochana and other police services. I have to say that I know that I am treading on controversial

ground with distinguished Members of this Committee, but where

foreign police services bring together Northern Ireland police officers and members of the Garda, I think they are doing the community in Northern Ireland a signal service.

Composition. We have put forward a lot of detailed proposals

which would ensure that within a decade, about a third of the police service in Northern Ireland was Catholic, Nationalist, Republican. I think that the rate of change, the rate of progress we have

suggested, is pretty much at the margins of the possible.

New York, for example, dealing with the problem of ethnic imbalance, the New York police moved from 12 percent ethnic minorities

to 33 percent in 25 years. In comparison, the rate of progress which

we are suggesting is pretty heroic, but I think it is achievable.

What it is going to depend on is Catholic and Nationalist and Republican community leaders, and political leaders encouraging

young men and women to become police officers.

I think we have opened the door and it is very important that

others encourage Catholics to go through that door. I hope that, as

some Nationalists have reacted in the last few weeks in a welcome

way in Northern Ireland, others will follow.

Let me just say a word about implementation of the report. The

British Government—and I don’t speak for them, this has been an

independent Commission—the British Government have said that

they are going to consult on the report until November and then

presumably begin the process of change.

We have suggested that in order to oversee change, there should

be an Oversight Commissioner who would visit Northern Ireland

regularly to establish that the report was being implemented, and

that if in some areas change was taking place slowly, there was an

adequate justification for that. Clearly the political situation and

the security situation in some areas will affect the pace of change,

although overall I think regardless of the political and security situation, much of what we propose could take place.

I wonder if I can ask Maurice to add a word.

Senator HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the

honor to speak to the Committee. I know some of the Members

from before, and your interest in the subject.

Chris was talking about the public meetings that we had. I remember the first one which was on Shankill Road in Belfast. After

a very contentious meeting, there was an old lady who had not spoken all evening, and she came over to me and she said, ‘‘Son, you

can only do your best.’’ I thought she captured the sense of the difficulty of the task and the integrity of the people concerned. There

was difficulty in finding a resolution between polar opposites, and

9

the likelihood that no one would thank us for it anyway. She has

been right, I think, on most scores.

I took on this job out of admiration for those political leaders and

their courage and vision and the historical compromise in the Good

Friday Agreement, and I thought that no citizen could refuse to

help under those circumstances. What we have done is deeply rooted in the Agreement. Our terms of reference were written for us

in quite some detail by the framers of the Agreement. I think anybody applying a reasonable checklist will see that we have addressed all of them as thoroughly as we can. They did not equip

us with subpoena powers. They did not equip us with an investigatory arm, and they did not equip us with a means of going over

former cases or reviewing past events, and we could only assume

that they wanted us to look forward.

The Good Friday Agreement itself is a forward-looking document.

It does tend to draw a line on the past. It does base the whole future of society on mutual respect, on equality of respect for the different traditions in Northern Ireland. That is why we have looked

forward.

We have informed ourselves of what went on in the past. We

have read previous reports, but basically to ensure that the events

which took place will not take place as far as can be prevented in

the future.

It seemed to us that the spirit of the Agreement was one of looking forward, and it would seem odd under those circumstances,

where you are letting prisoners out of jail, to be proposing to put

policemen in. We didn’t give anybody amnesty. There is nobody

who is immune to the law, to the prosecution of cases; and some

of the cases you mentioned are being investigated and may well

lead to prosecution and appearances in the court. It would have

been wrong for us, I think, to have become involved in that.

In addition to that, we have the position of the independent Police Ombudsman who we recommended should be able to review all

records of officers and previous files.

I think this is largely a managerial document. It imposes its controls in a managerial way. It may not be melodramatic enough for

people who wanted to see blood on the floor, but I can assure you

that a careful reading of that will show you that accountability is

intended for the establishment and the maintenance of professional

policing practices.

There are a few themes running through the report. One is accountability; accountability at the political level, at the local level,

accountability at the managerial level to ensure these professional

standards.

The second is transparency. People know their rights in relation

to the police. The police know what they can’t do and must do.

The third is respect for human rights.

The fourth is community representativeness and effectiveness

and efficiency.

The Holy Grail in all of this is the participation of young Catholic

and Nationalist people in the police force.

The quest everywhere in the world is for community policing,

community policing with the consent of the community being

policed. Policing in harmony with the community and cooperation

10

with the community, by a police force which is itself representative

of the community and which carries the respect of the community.

It doesn’t mean Catholic policemen to deal with Catholics and a

Protestant police force to deal with Protestants, but a police force

which commands the respect of the whole community. To do that,

it has to be representative, and it was for that reason we had to

take down the barriers which prevented young Catholics from adhering to the police, to get that percentage up from 8 percent to

somewhere near the demographic balance.

A test of our recommendations will be that young Catholic and

young Protestant youth can stand up at youth clubs in their own

district and say ‘‘I am going to join the police’’, without being jeered

out of existence or being kicked out. That is the test. I think it is

a challenge, and I think we have created structures on which others can build. It is a dynamic process. It is indeed, as you say, a

beginning, but I believe we made an honest and a decent beginning.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. I think you and Commissioner Patten make your

points extraordinarily well, and because time is limited and I have

a number of questions, I will reduce mine to one.

I would ask you to help us to understand something. Senator

Hayes, I think your point about being forward-looking is a very

good one. But it also seems to me that a vetting process, especially

in the Special Branch, but throughout the RUC, is not mutually exclusive of a forward-looking position; because if people who have

committed egregious abuses in the past stay in the same jobs or

work up the chain of command, your reform is only as good as your

weakest link.

This Committee has met with the three individuals who did the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission in El Salvador. We have

looked at other efforts to try to look forward, and also at the

present and past. Perhaps jail is not what everyone needs to look

at for those offending police, but at least they need to be taken out

of the positions where they can continue to do harm. I remember

that it was said to those who committed atrocities in El Salvador:

You can never run for office, you are finished. In terms of public

performance, you are persona non grata. If those people are still in

those positions undermining investigations, that could seriously

erode reform as you go forward.

Senator HAYES. They will not necessarily be in those positions.

One of the things that we have recommended is quite a serious

program of training and retraining for everybody in the organization, one made necessary because of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British domestic law. That

has enormous impacts, and all of the police have to be trained for

that.

Second, it is a police force which has been geared, for reasons

which we all know, to the conflict situation for 25 years, and they

are now having to move into a quite different style and culture of

policing with the community in a peaceful society, and that requires retraining.

There will also be repostings. One of the things that we have

suggested is tenure; that nobody should stay in a place like the

11

Special Branch or the special units for more than 5 years without

going back to community policing.

The proportion of people who are in community policing at the

moment is actually quite small. We are proposing that the center

be community policing. That means people will be relocated. There

is another important change actually in that, up to the present, policemen in Britain and Ireland could only be dismissed for gross

misconduct or for crime, not for inefficiency, and we are asking

every police officer to subscribe to a declaration of respect for

human rights and human dignity and service to the community.

That is what they are being judged against. It can be a constabulary offense not to be adaptable to change, and we think that in

that way people will be moved around. People will be trained and

some people might decide that this is not the sort of policing for

which they joined.

Mr. SMITH. Would you support the police board or the ombudsman establishing a vetting process as the next step? Retraining is

one thing, but there is this issue of justice and people being removed who have committed abuse or beatings in Castlereagh or

anywhere else.

Senator HAYES. I know the problem that you raise, and it is a

very difficult one to deal with, and I welcome any practical steps

that can do it, but there is a difficulty between establishing a vetting process which is clear on the one hand, and a witch hunt on

the other. The situation is very clear at the moment, and I would

not want to destabilize it actually by increasing the uncertainty for

the good and honorable policemen, of whom there are very many.

Mr. PATTEN. I am strongly in favor of vigorous management,

making sure that those who are in the police service are living up

to the oath that they would have taken. I am very much against

witch hunts.

The other thing that I would add is that under our proposals for

changing composition, for recruitment, for downsizing, within 10

years Northern Ireland would have not only about a third of a force

which is Catholic and Nationalist and Republican, but would also

have a 50 percent completely new force. Half the police service in

Northern Ireland would be new, and I think in that sort of turnover in the police service in composition, it should be possible to

deal with any bad apples.

Mr. SMITH. I can’t let the one comment go by. I am opposed to

a witch hunt as well, as is everybody; but every police force does

have an internal affairs department and is continually vetting its

own.

Mr. PATTEN. Absolutely. We are very strong about internal accountability and relating strong management to training and retraining. I don’t think we would disagree with anything that is

done in a decent police service in North America.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.

Chairman Patten, we have seen in the past, British commissions

have come and gone and many have left their reports on the shelf

to gather dust, and we hope certainly that is not going to be the

result here.

12

Do you believe that the British Government is fully committed

to implementing your report?

Mr. PATTEN. A former British Prime Minister described royal

commissions as taking minutes and wasting years, and I wouldn’t

like to think that Maurice and I and 6 of our colleagues had wasted

our year, but I can’t speak for the British Government, though I

used to be able to until the electorate took another view.

I think the only person who can answer the question on implementation is Mo, the Secretary of State. But I think all of us have

been grateful for the positive things which the British Government

have said about our report.

I should add, I have been pleased about the positive things that

police services around the world have said about our report, serving police officers here in North America, serving police officers in

the rest of the United Kingdom, serving police officers in the Republic.

What Mo Mowlam has said, is that she is going to give people

in Northern Ireland until November to comment on the report, and

then she is going to announce what she is going to carry forward.

Obviously I hope that nobody starts cherry-picking in this document, because I think it hangs together as a whole.

Some people have said that they are going to put forward their

own proposals. The official Unionists who have opposed our report

say that they are going to put forward their proposals. I hope they

are able, if they do, to put forward proposals better than ours in

ensuring that policing arrangements are such that Northern Ireland has a police service which can enjoy widespread support and

an integral part of the community as a whole.

Mr. GILMAN. I have one more question. Chief Constable Flanagan indicated that membership in loyalist orders like the Orange

Orders are totally inconsistent with building broad community support. In his statement he made before the House of Commons in

March of this past year, Mr. Flanagan, in responding to a query

of that nature and memberships, said, ‘‘I said it is more a matter

of perception. But in giving my answer, Chairman, I think I recognize the importance of perception and I stress my personal preference that my offices should not be members of the organizations

referred to,’’ talking about these kinds of orders.

Yet the Patten Commission report didn’t recommend any ban on

membership by police officers in those kinds of orders. Has the report therefore left a legacy in place that could erode the new police

service?

Mr. PATTEN. No. I note what Sir Ronnie says about preferring

that people weren’t members, not just of the Loyal Orders, but of

other similar institutions, even though they may have a different

religious background. I think that we are looking at organizations

including Masons, Loyal Orders, the Ancient Order of Hibernians,

and others.

I think you have to draw a distinction if you believe in civil liberties and freedoms. I think you have to draw a distinction between

what people may think and the way that they act. I think what we

can expect from police officers is impartiality.

Now, none of our investigations suggested that there were many

members of the Loyal Orders or the Ancient Order of Hibernians

13

in the police service in Northern Ireland, but we concluded that if

you wanted a police service that reflected the whole community, it

wouldn’t be right, and it would certainly infringe against most of

my civil libertarian instincts, to deny anybody the right to be a

member of any of those orders.

What we have said is that membership of any institution should

be declared and available to the police service and to the police ombudsman. Beyond that, I wouldn’t wish to go, although I note what

Sir Ronnie and other police chiefs have said about their preference.

But there is a difference between asserting that preference and actually taking on a fairly fundamental civil liberties issues.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Gejdenson.

Mr. GEJDENSON. It seems that the British and the American

Governments play a pretty strong role universally to press forward

in human rights and the development of democratic and civil societies. At an earlier meeting this morning, we talked about trying

to do that in the former Soviet Union. I wonder what you think

that the British Government and the U.S. Government could do to

accelerate the process in Northern Ireland. Senator Mitchell is over

there now and we are hopeful that he will move the process forward.

It seems that in areas where we have very little historical bond,

we are sometimes able to move things more rapidly than here in

Northern Ireland. There are places that the British Government

has been immensely helpful in resolving disputes, ethnic religious

disputes. Here, at our doorstep, in a sense, we seem to be kind of

floundering at this point.

Mr. PATTEN. I place on record our gratitude to not only the

American members of our Commission for the contribution they

made, but the contribution made by police services right across the

United States to our deliberations. Similarly, anybody who is as

passionately concerned about the future of Northern Ireland as I

am has to feel a huge debt of gratitude to Senator Mitchell, who

has done an extraordinary job.

What must be very frustrating for him is that I guess he felt, not

unreasonably on Good Friday last year, that he had done the difficult bit, and that implementing what had been agreed should be

fairly straightforward. He is now back trying to persuade local political leaders to implement it, with it still being the case that all

of the opinion polls demonstrate substantial majority support for

making a reality of the agreement. After all, what is the alternative?

I think you’ve been very helpful and I think we are getting to the

stage where the future of stability and peace and prosperity in

Northern Ireland is going to be self-evident and very plainly in the

hands of political leaders in Northern Ireland, and I hope they

won’t let down those they represent who I think want, with a burning passion, this to succeed.

In relation to the policing issue, I think it is very similar. It has

been very interesting that, for example, the press in Northern Ireland have been much more positive about our report than parts of

the press in the rest of the country.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. King.

14

Mr. PATTEN. With great apologies, I am going to have to move

on in a minute because I have got White House and other engagements. But if Maurice can stay—no, you have to leave, too. Perhaps

a couple more questions.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. King.

Mr. KING. Mr. Patten, I would like to welcome you here today

and commend you on the outstanding job that you have done. I also

would like to welcome back Anthony Cary. It seems like only yesterday that you left.

I identify myself also with the remarks of Chairman Smith on

the vetting issue and Chairman Gilman on the political will to implement the full Agreement, because I believe it would have to be

implemented in full to have full significance.

I would like to ask you why, in view of the fact that there have

been widespread allegations and evidence about RUC complicity or

threats being made against Pat Finucane or Rosemary Nelson, why

there is no reference made to either of those cases in your report?

Mr. PATTEN. There is no reference for the simple reason that we

followed our terms of reference. We weren’t set up as a judicial inquiry with the powers that an inquiry would have. For example,

the inquiry that is now looking into the deaths in Derry. We

weren’t set up with those powers. But nevertheless, we sought to

propose policing arrangements for the future, which would ensure

that the sort of allegations that have been made about what happened in the past could not be true in the future—which would

make it very difficult to do anything in the future such as is alleged to have taken place in the past. Because of legal issues I

have to be careful how I put these things.

We thought that in order to put forward adequate arrangements

for the future, we had to read the reports of what had happened

in the past. We asked for and were given access to all those reports—Stalker, Sampson, Stevens—and we saw the authors of

those reports.

What we say in our report reflects our study of those documents.

As you know, Stevens is still going. As you know, there are ongoing

at least one ongoing court case and conceivably others. But I want

to assure you that what we have said about issues from covert policing to the future of the Special Branch and to the general issue

of accountability and to the role of the policing board reflects what

we saw and read.

Mr. NEAL. Commissioner Patten we can’t get past the fact that

Senator Mitchell is back for the review because the Unionists have

said no to implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Tomorrow the Grand Orange Order in Belfast is going to meet to oppose

what it is that you have authored. You have received high marks

throughout your career, and the study that you have undertaken

here is a good start, and I think we would all acknowledge that.

But having said that, we have all shared one common experience,

and that is that we have all seen architectural renderings that look

marvelous and then we have seen the building, and oftentimes

there is a difference.

Your report to be implemented is also going to have to go

through stages of parliamentary action before it is fully implemented. How are we to be assured that this issue which cuts to the

15

core of many of the differences in the North of Ireland will ever be

implemented in the manner in which you have recommended?

Mr. PATTEN. The main critics of our report in the media, and I

suspect in politics as well, are people who don’t really like the

Agreement at all, are people who view the attempt to accommodate

decent Nationalist aspirations as somehow a treachery. It is easy,

isn’t it, to criticize every attempt to show generosity of spirit, to

argue for moderation; easy to criticize every such attempt as appeasement, as a surrender of the rule of law.

I repeat the point, what do these critics suggest should replace

the Good Friday Agreement? What do they suggest should be done

to ensure that police officers get the support right across the community which they deserve.

The answers to Northern Ireland’s problems isn’t to turn the

clock back. The answer to Northern Ireland’s problems isn’t to remember every old feud and humiliation and tragedy. The answer

is to try to move forward.

Now, I think our policing report is absolutely fundamental to

moving forward. I hope that the government will conclude that

after listening to views. I hope that the House of Commons will

conclude that after debating our recommendations. I hope that the

people of Northern Ireland will conclude that as well.

I don’t think this report is going to look at all bad against the

great sweep of events in Northern Ireland, but that is less important than whether it really does shape a policing service which the

people of Northern Ireland deserve. Everybody, I hope, should regard this report as an opportunity for a new beginning, for a police

service which everybody can sign up to, everybody can join, everybody can give their full-hearted consent to.

Maurice, do you want to add anything?

Senator HAYES. One of the most important recommendations we

made is for an implementation supervisor, and the idea of this is

for a figure of international standing and repute who could hold all

parties to account, including governments and treasuries responsible for providing the money, and that is a key and integral part

of the thing, to prevent the kind of outcome that Congressman

Neal was referring to.

Mr. PATTEN. But after his heroic efforts, I strongly suspect that

we can’t anticipate Senator Mitchell volunteering for the job.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Crowley.

Mr. CROWLEY. First, Mr. Patten, and Senator Hayes, thank you

for your work on this long-awaited document. We had a recent

meeting with members of the RUC—and this is just a quick statement. One of the questions I had was why is it that you cannot

change the color of the uniform from green to blue. The answer, we

were told by the RUC, was that green is an Irish color and we like

that color as opposed to moving it from a military to a policing

color.

I make that statement because of a concern of something so simple to do compared to what you are proposing, some 175 specific

recommendations of change that will radically change the police department if it is imposed. My question is, why didn’t we just start

all over? Instead of 175 complex changes? Why not just throw the

whole ball of wax out and start all over?

16

Mr. PATTEN. I don’t know many people who seriously think in

Northern Ireland that we could close down the police service tomorrow and somehow find a new one overnight. I just don’t think that

was ever a realistic option. Of course, one or two people argued it

to us and we considered it; but I think that was as unrealistic an

option as doing nothing at all, as finding even the uniform too difficult to contemplate.

I think we had to find proposals which were rooted in the real

world, and I think our proposals are. I think we offer a transformed policing service in Northern Ireland, as transformed as policing services have been in some other communities, not the least

in North America. I very much hope that when you visit Northern

Ireland in the future, you will be able to see those police officers

walking the streets everywhere, dealing with crime and difficulties

in every neighborhood, and being welcomed in every neighborhood

as well.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. We would like to submit some written

questions. Obviously some people here didn’t get a chance to ask

questions, and if you would be so kind to respond, it would help

us.

Mr. PATTEN. Thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. I would like to present the second panel, beginning

with Michael Posner, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee

for Human Rights, since its inception in 1978. Mr. Posner who

served on the board for Amnesty International, America’s Watch,

and the International League for Human Rights, has been a visiting lecturer at Yale law school and Columbia University law

school and has provided testimony to this Subcommittee numerous

times, and I can say without any fear of anyone contradicting me,

this Committee greatly values your contributions.

Michael Finucane is an attorney and the eldest son of Patrick

Finucane, a Belfast solicitor who was murdered in front of his family in 1989. In his work for the Pat Finucane Center, Michael has

actively sought justice and full disclosure of the facts behind that

heinous crime. We appreciated your previous testimony before the

Committee and applaud you for your courage in the face of incredible hardship and sorrow and adversity in standing up for human

rights in Northern Ireland.

Mr. SMITH. Michael, if you can begin.

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL POSNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

LAWYERS COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Mr. POSNER. First of all, I want to thank you, Chairman Smith,

for your longstanding interest and active involvement in these

issues, and thank this Committee for being a forum for these discussions now and hopefully in the future.

First, I should say, we also share—and I have a written statement which I would like to make part of the record, but in it we

say that the Lawyers Committee also appreciates the stellar work

of Chairman Patten and the Commission on Policing. They took on

an enormously difficult task and did it with great care and attention, and I think their report reflects that.

We particularly appreciate the focus that the report places on

human rights and accountability, and those are themes that run

17

throughout the report. I think they do set in some respects a

framework for what they call a new beginning, but certainly a moving forward in a very problematic area.

At the same time, we also were quite disappointed, as many of

you have expressed, that the Commission in its report failed to

grapple directly with the issue of impunity and of past violations,

and I think in some respects the answer that Mr. Patten just gave

with respect to that is in a sense presenting a paradigm that is not

necessarily the only one. I don’t think anybody here, or certainly

we didn’t expect that the Commission on Policing would undertake

to investigate all of the past crimes of the last 30 years.

What we had hoped and what I think all of us now face is the

prospect of dealing with what has really become a cycle of impunity

and for dealing with the reality that the RUC is not at a new beginning. It has 11,000 or 12,000 people on active service, many of

whom have been with the force for a long time, and too many of

whom have been responsible for grave violations of human rights.

The question is, what do you get to get some change.

Our view has been and continues to be that there has to be a

targeted focus on specific egregious cases. I am here this morning

in part to again reiterate our concerns about two of those cases, the

Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson cases, and then I just want

to say a couple of words in closing.

I am going to defer to Michael on the Patrick Finucane case, except to say that for 10 years now we have followed and been very

actively involved in that case. We are not satisfied or convinced

that a third Stevens inquiry or participation is the way to address

that. We would here again call and urge you to call for an independent inquiry. There are too many different strands and sensitivities and there is a need to get at the truth, both in terms of

who ordered the killing, who knew about it, and who covered it up.

With respect to the Rosemary Nelson case, you all had an opportunity to see and hear her last year, almost a year to the day, and

she came and testified that basically she was at risk and that she

was receiving, on a regular basis, threats; threats delivered

through her clients by members of the police.

Here we sit a year later, and we ask ourselves what is being

done to address not only her horrible murder last March, but also

what is being done to investigate the climate and the official tolerance of the kind of threats that in some way set an environment

in which the horrible murder happened.

We have been troubled by the way that investigation has proceeded. We are now 6 months into the investigation of the Rosemary Nelson murder. A British policeman named Colin Port has

been assigned as the officer in charge. He reports directly to Ronnie Flanagan, the chief constable of the RUC. His people are in

Lurgan, an RUC office using RUC computers with RUC investigators part of that investigation.

We have—I have as part of the written submission that I have

made, and I hope that you will make it part of the record, an exchange of correspondence with Mo Mowlam about the structure of

that investigation, again in our view critically flawed. There needs

to be a thoroughly independent investigation, with no participation

18

of the RUC except where the person in charge deems it absolutely

essential and indispensable.

We feel that there are people who may have information about

the Rosemary Nelson murder who are unwilling or reluctant to

come forward because their perception is that this is just another

RUC investigation that will go nowhere.

Two last comments. One thing in a broader sense that Maurice

Hayes said that I agree with, a number of the recommendations in

the Patten Commission report are managerial in tone and I think

are very good recommendations with respect to training and structure. My colleagues on the next panel will deal with some of those

in detail.

I would just make one general observation, which is that any

manager has got to be thinking, once a plan, once a broad framework is in place, what is the operational plan to implement it. Timing, dollars or pounds, what is it going to take to do it practically?

That is a problem here.

Second, there has to be a change in institutional culture, and I

would say as a first element of that, coming back to the Nelson and

the Finucane cases, there has to be a suggestion that the way

things are in the future is fundamentally different than the way

that they have been in the past. This report from the Patten Commission doesn’t necessarily lead us there, and I think it is incumbent upon all of us to press the British Government and others to

make sure that message is sent.

Finally, there needs to be a leadership of any institution internally that make those things happen. I think all of us have to ask

ourselves, and British authorities have to ask themselves, is the

current leadership of the RUC prepared fundamentally to take on

the enormous task of making this plan, this framework of the Patten Commission operational? I question that. It seems to me that

all of us have to be asking those questions.

Externally there are a number of things not in place, or at least

proposed in the report, that aren’t in place. An ombudsman, it is

a good suggestion and there is no ombudsman.

The operational capacity, this transitional Oversight Commissioner, it has to be someone strong, with a lot of authority. A police

board.

There are a number of—this is a blueprint with a lot of interesting ideas. I think we ought to push it to the limit. We ought to

view it as a package, but we ought to view it as the beginning of

the beginning and recognize now that the tough work of implementation begins, and I am for one not convinced that the British Government is going to operationalize this in a way that is going to

really create a new beginning in terms of human rights.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Those submissions will be made a part

of the record, without objection.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Posner appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Finucane.

19

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL FINUCANE, SON OF PATRICK

FINUCANE, SLAIN DEFENSE ATTORNEY

Mr. FINUCANE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to preface

my remarks by offering my sincere thanks on behalf of myself and

my family for the invitation to speak today.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, my fellow speakers,

ladies and gentlemen, I am Michael Finucane, the eldest son of Pat

Finucane, the defense lawyer murdered in 1989. I testified before

this Committee 2 years ago and I openly accused the British Government of ordering and arranging the murder of my father. I

pointed to the powerful motivation of the British Government in silencing the embarrassing revelations of my father’s human rights

work. I listed the names of prominent international organizations

that had up until then supported my family’s call for a full, independent inquiry into his murder.

Upon hearing the accusations I had to make and the proof I had

to offer, this Committee immediately pledged its support to my

family’s call for an independent inquiry. Many others have done

the same since, including the Irish Government, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Param Cumaraswamy, who has also been

a witness before this Committee, the Law Society of Ireland, the

Law Society of Northern Ireland, the Bar Council of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales.

On February 12, this year, a petition was published in several

national newspapers marking the 10th anniversary of my Father’s

death. It was signed by over 1,300 lawyers worldwide, clearly

showing to the British Government an unprecedented level of international support for an independent inquiry into his murder.

On the same day, my family and I presented a confidential report compiled by the London-based NGO British Irish Rights

Watch to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam.

This report was based in part on classified information from British intelligence files. It clearly showed that military intelligence

had clear advance knowledge of the plot to assassinate my father

and that their agent, Brian Nelson, aided the assassins without

hindrance.

I would very much like to be able to tell this Committee that all

of these efforts and pledges of support have led to the establishment of an independent public inquiry. They have not. In the last

12 months, the British Government has ignored not only the calls

of this Committee, but has also dismissed a second report of the

United Nations Special Rapporteur and has refused to respond to

the report of British Irish Rights Watch.

Added to this are the events that have unfolded in Northern Ireland in the last number of months, events disclosing highly sinister

practices on the part of the RUC and the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland in relation to the prosecution of those

responsible for murdering my father.

In March 1999, the chief constable of the RUC, Ronnie Flanagan,

recalled John Stevens to Northern Ireland. Mr. Stevens was the

English police officer who first investigated collusion between the

RUC and loyalist paramilitaries, and he had been instructed by the

chief constable to reopen my father’s murder investigation.

20

The chief constable is on record as having stated that previous

investigations by Mr. Stevens had completely exonerated the RUC

from any illegal involvement in the murder of my father. Mr. Stevens, however, began his duties by opening an initial press conference with the statement that he had never before investigated

the case of Patrick Finucane, nor had he been asked to do so.

What, then, is the truth of this matter? Is the chief constable of

the RUC lying about the investigation into my father’s murder? Is

he aware of wrongdoing or illegality on the part of his officers and

has he sought to cover it up?

On June 23rd this year, Mr. Stevens charged a man named William Alfred Stobie with my father’s murder. The first thing that

Stobie said when formally charged was ‘‘not guilty of the charge

that you have put to me tonight. At the time I was a police informer for RUC-Special Branch. On the night of the death of Patrick Finucane, I informed Special Branch on two occasions by telephone of a person who was to be shot. I did not know at the time

of the person who was to be shot.’’ . When Stobie first appeared in court, his lawyer stated that his

client was a paid Crown agent from 1987 until 1990 and that he

gave the RUC information on two occasions before my father’s murder which was not acted upon. In addition, Stobie’s lawyer claimed

that ‘‘as a result of this information at another trial involving William Stobie on firearms charges in 1991, the Crown offered no evidence and a finding of not guilty was entered on both counts. My

instructions are that the bulk of the evidence here today has been

known to the authorities for almost 10 years.’’ . Mr. Stobie has appeared before the courts on a number of occasions since then. More information has come to light showing that

what his lawyer said in court is absolutely true.

In 1990, Mr. Stobie was charged with the possession of firearms

found in his home. I can say from my personal legal experience

that the evidence against him would have convicted any other person and that this was the logical outcome here. However, in this

case, the charges were dropped because Stobie threatened to expose

his role as an RUC agent. The chief prosecutor in this case, Jeffrey

Foote, QC, is now a judge serving on the county court bench in

Northern Ireland.

It has also emerged that Mr. Stobie confessed to his role in my

father’s murder while in police custody in 1990 and even the very

existence of this confession was denied as recently as the 3rd of August this year. At a court hearing on that day, it was stated that

the DPP had decided not to prosecute Stobie for my father’s murder due to a lack of evidence. It was claimed that the evidence

against him consisted solely of notes taken by a journalist during

an interview in 1990 which until now had not been stated in evidential form capable of being used in a criminal trial. This decision

not to prosecute Mr. Stobie was specifically stated to have been

taken by the DPP’s office at the highest level. This decision was

made on the 16th of January, 1991, 7 days before the firearms

charges were dropped against him.

The only reason my family are aware that Mr. Stobie made a

confession is because it emerged at a later court hearing this year.

The RUC are currently seeking to compel another journalist who

21

interviewed Mr. Stobie in 1990 to hand over his notes of interview.

Mr. Ed Moloney, the journalist concerned, has refused to do so and

has cited journalistic privilege. It was during a court hearing on

this issue that an RUC chief inspector stated William Stobie had

admitted supplying the weapons in my father’s murder and recovering them after the killing. Stobie admitted this in police custody

in 1990. He also admitted that he was a Special Branch agent.

All of these matters raise important questions for the various institutions and individuals concerned. Why was William Stobie not

charged in 1990 when a confession was on record and in the hands

of the RUC? Why did it take the recall of John Stevens, 9 years

later, before charges were proffered? Furthermore, why did the

DPP decide at the highest level not to prosecute Stobie, given the

existence of a confession? Why was the very existence of this confession denied in court on August 3 this year?

Is the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions complicity in

concealing wrongdoing by members of the RUC as the chief constable Ronnie Flanagan has done? RUC officers have engaged in a

persistent campaign of hostility, intimidation, and abuse of defense

lawyers in Northern Ireland. They have uttered death threats

against many lawyers, two of whom have been assassinated. None

have been brought to account for their actions.

This is the glaring omission in the report of the Patten Commission and the fundamental error. While the report contains many

welcomed proposals for a human rights-based police service with

primary responsibility for the whole community, it shies away from

key issues that quite simply must be addressed if the new police

service as a whole is to succeed.

The Commission said they had no mandate to do so. I respectfully disagree. In the terms of reference of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, it is contained that the

Commission should focus on policing issues but if it identifies other

aspects of the criminal justice system relevant to its work on policing, including the role of the police in prosecution, then it should

draw the attention of the government to those matters.

Surely the Commission does not suggest that the persistent and

credible concerns concerning RUC threats and harassment of defense lawyers is not relevant to its work. The RUC has labeled lawyers as the enemy and has engaged in a systematic campaign to

undermine their role. They have actively pursued a course that has

put the lives of all defense lawyers at risk and they have colluded

with those who are prepared to murder them. At the very least,

any new service needs to be retrained in its approach toward dealing with defense lawyers who are, after all, simply carrying out the

function which it is their duty to do. The lawyer who represents

William Stobie, Joe Rice, stated to the Lawyers Committee for

Human Rights in 1992 that if a lawyer rocks the boat too much,

then like Patrick Finucane, he or she will be in trouble.

Threats have continually been made for many years by RUC officers against defense lawyers. As far back as 1984, a client of my

father’s was told, ‘‘Finucane would be like you, he’d be f————’

blown away.’’

In 1988, Amnesty International recorded a statement from a

man who been badly beaten while in RUC custody and who was

22

represented by my father. He said that the RUC told him, it would

be better if he, Patrick Finucane, were dead rather than defending

the likes of you.

Five weeks before my father was murdered, another man was

told by an RUC officer that his solicitor was working for the IRA

and would meet his end also. He asked me to give Mr. Finucane

a message from him. He told me to tell him that he is a thug in

a suit, a person trying to let on that he is doing his job, and that

he, like every other fenian bastard, would meet his end.

These threats had continued unabated for so many years that

many lawyers, my father included, came to view them as an occupational hazard. Now, when an RUC officer tells a detained person

that his lawyer will be shot, that lawyer must regard the threat as

real. Lawyers are also members of the community that the Patten

report seeks to serve, and as such they are entitled to protection

from such individuals. The reality that lawyers must live with is

that, notwithstanding the fact that their lives are at risk from

paramilitaries, they are also at risk from the RUC.

These issues are crucial. They are crucial because two very courageous lawyers have paid with their lives. Despite many submissions that specifically highlighted the existence of collusion in the

murders of both my father and Rosemary Nelson, they are not addressed in any way in the report of the Patten Commission. The

report of the Patten Commission makes specific mention, time and

again, of RUC officers who were killed during their period of service and how their families should now be accommodated. But it

does not recommend anything for the benefit of those who have

been murdered either by the RUC or with the assistance and collusion of the RUC. Why is this? Does the report seek to distinguish

between classes of victims?

The report also ignores the fact that the very officers who engaged in activities of intimidation and abuse are still serving with

the RUC. Furthermore, the report proposes no mechanism for ridding the new police service of these officers. It does not even recommend that they should account for their years of serial abuse of

human rights. I can categorically state that given the Patten report’s absence of recommendations in this area, given the continued

absence of effective government proposals, and given a complete

lack of any commitment to stringent measures to deal with this

problem, defense lawyers in Northern Ireland are still in trouble,

the worst kind of trouble, their very lives are on the line.

In this very chamber 1 year ago, I sat in the audience and listened to a most remarkable lady, Rosemary Nelson, utter the now

haunting words ‘‘No lawyer can forget what happened to Pat

Finucane.’’ Rosemary said she looked forward to a day when her

role as a professional lawyer would be respected, and where she

could carry out her duties without hindrance or intimidation. She

did not live to see that day.

On March 15 this year, Rosemary Nelson was murdered. She had

spoken publicly of the threats to her life that she had been forced

to learn to cope with, hoping that by publicly highlighting the regime targeted against her, she could somehow protect herself and

her family from harm. In identical circumstances to those of my father, she became a target, and consequently a victim.

23

To date, no one has been charged with her murder. The political

circus that took place over simply trying to ensure that independent police personnel would investigate her murder speaks volumes about how little the British Government values the lives of

people who are murdered for simply doing their job.

Is this to be always the way that the State and the police in

Northern Ireland, by any name, deal with lawyers who ask uncomfortable questions, who take on contentious cases, who seek to uphold the rights of all people without fear or favor?

The RUC as a police force—and I use the word ‘‘force’’ very deliberately—bears total responsibility for the sins of its past. Whether

by act or omission, each and every member of the force must face

up to the fact that they bear some responsibility for what has happened. The victims of atrocities cannot deny nor forget what happened. Indeed, the generosity of spirit of many fortunate victims of

RUC collusion puts those who are responsible to shame. These people are prepared to work hard for the future of Northern Ireland,

both for their own sake and the sake of future generations. But

they should not be asked to simply swallow their pain, they should

not be asked to erase the memory of those they have lost, and they

should not be asked to watch as those who have abused and killed

and conspired to kill them and their loved ones are ushered into

a new police service without being asked to render so much as an

apology.

If we are truly to see a new police service for all of the community in Northern Ireland, then there must be courage underlying

our convictions. We must be able to turn to those who are not capable of participating in a new police service based on tolerance and

respect for others, and tell them that they have no place.

I do not deny that this is a difficult task. But in doing what must

be done, we are acknowledging that wrongdoing of the most heinous kind has taken place and that there are some acts which cannot go unpunished. The dead have paid the ultimate price. I believe

it is right and proper that those responsible should not escape

without payment of any kind.

I thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Finucane, for your excellent testimony. It was very comprehensive, very persuasive.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Finucane appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Gilman has to leave, but did want to ask a question or two.

Mr. GILMAN. I want to thank Mr. Posner and Mr. Finucane for

coming before our Committee and giving their valuable testimony.

Mr. Posner, what one thing can be done about the British inquiry

into Rosemary Nelson’s death truly independent so we all can have

some confidence in its conclusion?

Mr. POSNER. I think the most important thing is to set up an

independent inquiry into the murder. Right now, you have a hybrid

with a British police officer, Colin Port, directing a mix of British

and Northern Ireland RUC officials, and basically it taints the

process.

Mr. GILMAN. Has a request of that nature been made?

Mr. POSNER. Repeatedly.

24

Mr. GILMAN. To whom?

Mr. POSNER. Attached to my testimony are a couple of letters

that we have sent to Mo Mowlam. We have met with her.

Mr. GILMAN. Has she responded to that kind of request?

Mr. POSNER. The responses have been thus far that they are

moving in the direction of trying to create safeguards within the

current process, but we have not had a satisfactory response.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Finucane, the weapon used to kill your father

was a British army revolver, I believe, and which initially was contended was stolen. In light of recent revelations of collusion with

the security services, do you still believe or have any new evidence

that that weapon was in fact stolen?

Mr. FINUCANE. Absolutely. The individual who stole the weapon

from police barracks was prosecuted for the theft and sentenced to

I think a term of 2 years imprisonment.

Mr. GILMAN. Did he admit the use of that weapon and that he

stole the weapon?

Mr. FINUCANE. No. The individual who stole the weapon was

serving in the Ulster Defense Regiment, a part-time sort of civilian

militia which assisted the RUC in security operations. He was simply prosecuted for the theft of the weapon, and the weapon itself

was never recovered. But it is clear, given the records of the

weapon—— Mr. GILMAN. How did the killer obtain that weapon?

Mr. FINUCANE. It was passed to loyalist paramilitaries presumably by the person who stole it. But the reason that it could be

identified as a State-held weapon was because of the ballistic

markings on the bullets.

Mr. GILMAN. Which paramilitary was it given to?

Mr. FINUCANE. It was given to the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

Mr. GILMAN. I’m sorry?

Mr. FINUCANE. The Ulster Freedom Fighters. They are, and have

been for many years, the paramilitary wing of an organization

called the Ulster Defense Association, which is also now proscribed.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I regret I

have to go on to another hearing and I want to thank you both for

being here today.

Mr. SMITH. Because the clock ran out, I would like to show some

small courtesy to those members who were not able to ask questions in the last panel, and so we will go to them first.

Mr. Payne.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith, and let me once

again commend you for this fourth in a series of hearings that

you’ve had. I think that with the persistence that you have shown

on this, hopefully we will see some changes. We have already seen

some come about, but we have a long way to go.

Unfortunately, Mr. Patten had to leave. I wanted to just ask him

again about making an analogy between an investigation of misconduct by police as a witch hunt. I think a witch hunt is not an

investigation of a police department. If the connotation of an investigation by internal or external forces of the RUC is in his mind

a witch hunt, I just wanted to put that on the record.

Also, regarding the statement that he made regarding the use of,

as he calls it, plastic baton rounds, or plastic bullets, I have legislaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:14 Feb 12, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\64523 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
25

tion asking for a ban on the manufacture of plastic bullets in the

U.S. and urging the RUC to cease using them.

I keep one of these on my desk, and each time we have a hearing

I just bring it along, because he says there is no other alternative

other than to simply use bullets or this. These have killed 17 people and when they hit young people, they just rip eyes out of their

head and tear their bodies apart, sometimes using so many that

the guns are too hot to hold. That is wrong and it is unnecessary

and I still cannot understand why there is a resistance to stop

using these lethal weapons as a means of crowd control.

Let me just say that in addition, I think to your investigation,

the investigation of your father’s death, I think that Bloody Sunday

in 1972 needs to be reopened. That is something that is another

whitewash of the government.

Finally, I just want to say that I agree with other speakers that

the RUC needs to be disbanded totally. It makes no sense to have

so many technical changes. I can use the situation in Haiti. I was

there 2 weeks ago. They had a police department in Port-Au-Prince

run by a member of the military, a fellow named Francois Mishon.

The army did the rest of the policing run by General Raoul Cedras.

What they did in Haiti was to disband the army and disband the

Port-Au-Prince Police Department. They have started from scratch

with new recruits, with a brand new police department. Now they

are struggling and they are moving along, but in my opinion, that

is what has to happen to the RUC.

You cannot reform, talking about 10 years from now, 50 percent.

How can you have the RUC patrolling in Derry where you have 90

percent Catholic and you have got a 95 percent Protestant military? That will never work. So I think that there are examples of

places in other parts of the world that can be looked at and studied

to see how you go about having a new police unit there.

Finally, there is the tension that is built during the marching

season. I have been down in lower Armagh Road, I have stayed

right on Garvaghy Road 2 years ago, right on the road itself, my

three or four trips there during the marching season. I think that

the Parades Committee does not do the job that it should do. In

the last year, they have tended to acquiesce, but I am looking toward the future. They refuse to meet with the community groups

as it is in the protocol of the Parades Committee, and the agitation

continually of the marchers which creates the tension is really

something that I think needs to be restudied carefully by the Parades Committee.

The fact that the tension still remains is something that I believe

is a major issue as we move forward. I have no questions, Mr.

Chairman. I just wanted to make those several statements.

Once again, I commend you and of course Mr. Posner and Mr.

Finucane for coming. Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much.

Mr. POSNER. Could I just react to one? The first thing you said

I think is important with respect to the inquiry. Some of our colleagues are going to talk about the absence of a vetting procedure

and the Commission report. Chairman Smith, you mentioned it. I

think we have to recognize the report is what it is now. The question is how to move forward.

26

It seems to me that the most critical element here is you have

to, rather than saying all right, there’s this whole big mass of

cases, we have to start somewhere, there has to be right now at

a very early stage here, before things get adrift, there has to be

pressure to say, in the Finucane case, in the Nelson case, and half

a dozen others that we all know, there has to be a change here.

Because if there isn’t a change and there isn’t some sense of accountability, personal accountability, criminal accountability, then

you are never going to get the change culture and you are never

going to get young Catholic kids to decide they want to be part of

the police. All these things are linked together.

But I think the Patten Commission have put together a very ambitious plan, but a critical element is missing. It is for us, all of

us who are concerned about these issues and particularly you all,

to keep the pressure up, to keep saying this is too critical a moment to abandon the effort to really get at accountability. I appreciate your comment.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony today. I was going to ask a question similar to the statement

posed by my colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Payne.

There is much that is positive within the report. I think we have

heard your concerns regarding the vetting process, regarding individual cases that certainly have great validity and legitimacy. But

my fundamental concern is the pace of the change. The reality is

that we know that the RUC is not going to be disbanded. That

clearly was the conclusion of the Commission.

But as Mr. Payne pointed out, it has been less than 3 years since

the Haitian National Police have been constituted absolutely from

the beginning. We had the disbanding of the military. I would suggest that the goals that have been established, a third within 10

years, are simply not satisfactory. First, from the perspective of a

third, clearly within 10 years presumably, that will not be reflective of the community at large. I dare say by then the religious

breakdown will be close to 50 percent. Again I am not suggesting

that these are quotas, and I don’t think that is how we should approach the issue, but if we are going to have a change in the culture, am I correct in concluding that until there is an appropriate

reflection of the composition, that culture will never change, or at

least the confidence of the community at large will simply not

exist?

He made the analogy with the fact that it took decades in New

York City, but that is an analogy I don’t think that really stands

up to close analysis. Here we have a situation where it is clear that

it is a political issue, as Mr. Patten indicated himself, and that was

an issue that was deferred. I think he described it as really one of

the core issues in terms of the hopes for peace in Northern Ireland.

That certainly wasn’t the case in New York City or any other

major American city. So is it really a question of political will? Is

it lack of resources? But that is a concern that I have. Someone

raised the issue, I think it might have been Chairman Smith, in

terms of membership in various orders, and he drew the analogy

with the Order of Hibernians and the Orange Order. I am sure we

don’t have to be concerned about members of the Hibernians in the

27

RUC. There are only about 6 percent Catholics to begin with. I

don’t know what we can do about it. But clearly I think 10 years

is unacceptable. That composition and that change which I think

is so important in terms of the confidence of again the community

at large, can occur within a matter of several years if the political

will and the resources that are necessary are available. I would be

interested in your comments.

Mr. POSNER. In March I traveled in Northern Ireland with Robert McGuire, who is a former police commissioner of New York, and

we spent several hours speaking with Mr. Flanagan and about 20

people in the RUC. We had just this discussion. I think the thing

that we stressed to them, and I believe very strongly, is that there

needs to be a very dramatic shift so that there is a critical mass

within the police that in effect begins to change the culture. When

you talk to people, Catholics, who are contemplating being in the

police, one of the things they say, and it makes sense, is, ‘‘I don’t

want to be the only one,’’ or, ‘‘I don’t want to be one of a few.’’ . So I agree with you. I think the direction here of the report is

right but it is a very cautious, slow, and I think too slow approach.

I also think, even if you take a more aggressive approach with

numbers, those numbers are going to be fictitious unless you do

change the underlying assumptions of this force. It is operated almost as an armed force, an army, more than a police force. It has

been unaccountable on a variety of levels which are spelled out in

the report.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think that is accurate. The fact that it has

shifted, if you will, to an understanding that it is not an instrument of the State, but there to protect the civil liberties and the

human rights of each citizen is very positive; but that, in and of

itself, the mission statement is not going to change until you have

implemented it, I believe, with a force that is more reflective again

of the entire community. But 10 years?

In my previous career, I was the elected chief prosecutor in the

metropolitan Boston area. Given the resources that are available

now and given what hopefully exists in terms of the political will

at least that has been expressed by the British Government and

others, that that 10 years can be reduced to several years, and it

is important now to aggressively recruit from the Nationals community, from the Catholic community.

Mr. PAYNE. If the gentleman will yield, the other fallacy is simply this: If you bring in new people at the bottom, then those who

are members of the RUC at this time will be in control for the next

5 or 6 decades. They will be pushed up, they will be in control, and

the leadership of the RUC will not reflect the new people coming

in. It cannot work. It will be the same culture at the top as they

move up to the top, as they bring in new people. They will be controlling all of that. We have the same situation as some other police units. You have to just disband. I know it is a radical thing,

but that is the only thing, in my opinion, that will truly work.

Mr. FINUCANE. Mr. Chairman, I would please just like to add,

one of the things Mr. Patten said this morning when commenting

on his report was that the 30 percent composition of Catholic officers was the outside margin of his projection, it was the best case

scenario and a change of 50 percent, I assume, coming with a

28

greater influx of female officers, which are also lacking in the force

at the moment.

But the problem here is that if you have new officers being recruited, even aggressively recruited from Catholic and Nationalist

areas, they are going to be instructed by the older officers, who are

not officers who have practiced their trade, as it were, with any

thoughts of human rights. In fact, it has been completely the opposite. It is my view that what they will be passing on is not techniques of how to respect other people and to achieve results

through tolerance and understanding, but basically to instruct people as to what they can get away with. Past case evidence has

shown that they are capable of getting away with everything from

murder down.

I would also like to say that the change in the RUC is not just

a question of political will. It has to happen anyway, from simple

kinds of efficiency—the force is unworkable—right down to fundamental distrust and rejection by large sections of the community

where there has to be root and branch reform at every level.

There also needs to be an external catalyst. It is my view that

an independent inquiry into harassment of lawyers on the murders

of my father and Rosemary Nelson could very well provide that catalyst. Over the last 10 years, it has always been the approach of

my family when seeking support, not to overtly try to persuade persons in influential positions, but simply to present them with the

evidence. Without exception, they have all come back with exactly

the same conclusions that we have reached.

Given that that is the case and given you really can’t go any further, if I may be slightly sycophantic for a second, than Congress

or the U.N. In seeking support, and we have got the support of

both those institutions, I see no reason why the British Government, if they don’t want to take my word for it or my family’s word

for it, then they really ought to take the word of this institution

or the United Nations and institute an inquiry. Because not only

will it deal with the problem and bring to light all of the facts that

are emerging piecemeal, but it will have a tumultuous effect on the

confidence of Nationalists in the will of the State to reform its own

institutions and to face up to the wrongdoing that has been done.

That need not necessarily involve criminal prosecutions, but the

acknowledgment has to be there, as was seen in the truth and reconciliation hearings in South Africa.

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you, you answered my earlier questions of Commissioner Patten and Senator Hayes on the whole

issue of vetting. Frankly, as I read the report, and I read it twice,

once with a pen in my hand, it was filled with markings, and the

next time with a yellow highlighter. I seemed to underline all the

same things. It is the glaring omissions as well, as you have pointed out so well, that are probably the most troubling. Why weren’t

defense attorneys included? That is an issue that we have raised,

we have had resolutions passed in Congress, we have had linked

it to RUC training with the FBI, a proposal which is still in conference with the Senate. I had offered that. It was a bipartisan effort. Mr. King and I, and many of us were behind that, making future training contingent on whether or not there is an independent

inquiry into Patrick Finucane’s murder and Rosemary Nelson’s. Yet

29

we still seem stuck. Are they afraid as to where it might go in

terms of how high into the structure?

I was struck by Senator Hayes’s comment about being forward

thinking. I tried to convey back to him, as you probably heard, that

in order to go forward, you need to look back. Past is prologue. If

you have, as they call it in the report, ‘‘bad apples’’ within the system, particularly if they are in the Special Branch in a higher proportion than anywhere else, simply offering a golden parachute,

which is suggested here, might get the good people to leave, while

the others who cling to power and to abuse of power are perhaps

more likely to stay without a vetting process.

I am glad, Mr. Payne pointed out, as I tried to do at the moment

it was mentioned by Mr. Patten, that to suggest in any way, shape,

or form that this is a witch hunt is nonsensical. This is an effort,

as we have in our own police forces here in the United States, to

track down those who abuse, those who beat, those who do horrific

things against innocent people, or even accused people who may

end up being convicted. They still are entitled to due process rights

as well as an absolute freedom from beatings and torture and all

the other things that are employed.

These missing elements really concern me. As I said to the British Ambassador when we met several weeks ago, which was the

genesis of this hearing when we made the request that Commissioner Patten testify, I am also concerned about this being the high

bar or a ceiling, and then as we go through the process in the Parliament, things get left out, things don’t get included in the legislation; and then everyone says we have done that, we have got the

T-shirt, and we move on. That would be a major, major problem.

I can assure you, Mr. Finucane, that we will be ever vigilant on

this Committee, we will be bipartisan in to keeping the call for an

independent inquiry into your father’s death alive. We will increasingly link it to other things, even as this process goes forward, because you cannot move forward if you still have this terrible taint

and these horrible things in the background.

It reminds me of a cancer, if I may use a health metaphor. If you

don’t get it all, it comes back to haunt you. No matter how good

the operating surgeon is, he has got to be sure to get it all; then

to pile on with the chemotherapy and radioactive efforts to try to

kill it.

We need to have a vetting process that gets at this, those socalled bad apples, as they continually refer to them as, and do it

once and for all. There is international precedent for it. I tried to

convey that to Commissioner Patten. We will continue to do so, because again it is a serious omission. But why was it left out? Was

it for consensus purposes?

Mr. POSNER. I am not privy to the internal conversations, but it

was clearly a lot of inferences in the report that were never explicitly said. The references to accountability throughout the report I

think reflect the fact that this has been a largely unaccountable institution on every level. It is not just human rights cases. It has

been a bloated, inefficient and unaccountable institution.

We were given a report by the chief constable. In 1997, there

were 5,500 complaints made to the police about their force. That

year, one person was dismissed from the force—5,500 complaints.

30

We asked, How could that be. They said, We have an excellent

force. Well, the answer is there is no internal discipline. We have

got to assume here that the Patten Commission knew that and

that the code of accountability says there has to be some internal

process to change that. It is not going to happen unless there is external pressure. That is why we need an ombudsman, we need this

Oversight Commissioner to be tough and strong.

It is critical for you, Congressman, and others here to keep putting the pressure on because this is going to be a hard fight.

Mr. SMITH. I was struck by the comment—Mr. Finucane, did you

want to comment?

Mr. FINUCANE. Just to say, Mr. Patten said this morning that

you couldn’t really cherry-pick the report. I agree. I also agree with

him when he says it hangs together very well.

But I must also, with some disappointment, agree with an earlier

comment that was made here today, that you now have to take the

report as it is. The fact is, no vetting mechanism has been proposed. Therefore, there has to be, unless the recommendations are

augmented in Parliament, then there has to be an external mechanism. Certainly one thing that I believe is crucial, and not just for

my own or my family’s purposes, is clearing up this issue of harassment of defense lawyers and collusion as a whole, because in relation to the reasons why the Patten Commission perhaps didn’t address this is because, yes, it goes to the very top, it goes right

through everything. On the one hand, you have an argument that

every single person in Northern Ireland killed by Loyalists was

probably the victim of collusion, to the other end of the spectrum,

where the argument is that perhaps not all persons were victims

of collusion, or their killings involved collusion but there were very

many people who were specifically targeted by the government and

the RUC to be removed because they were undesirables. Those are

the spectrums of the argument: everybody or a few selective individuals. So it exists. It is undeniable that it exists.

While the RUC personnel and the intelligence personnel were

using this network, there was a network in place. I don’t think the

Patten Commission were prepared to take that on quite simply.

Mr. SMITH. In a sense, they have cherry-picked the fundamental

issue. They are asking that the report not be cherry-picked, but

they have left aside some of the key issues that should have been

addressed.

Plastic baton rounds, according to the report, were fired 56,000

times, resulting in, according to their numbers, 16 deaths, although

I often hear 17 deaths and 615 injuries. Interestingly, it is pointed

out in the report that they are available for use in other UK police

services. Although there have been some close calls, it continues,

they have never actually been used. Fifty-six thousand times they

have been used in the north of Ireland, never been used anywhere

else. It does raise an issue almost like you said, Mr. Posner, about

only one police officer paying a consequence for abusive behavior.

How do you respond to the comments that Mr. Patten made earlier, that rather than using live rounds, this is something that his

Commission has concluded should still be available for use?

Mr. POSNER. I know that Jane Winter is going to speak to this

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mission that plastic bullets be eliminated. We did that after talking

to a number of police people, including some of the people who run

crowd control for the New York City police, and they said, very

simply, when you pose this as an option, then these are going to

be used a lot more frequently and a lot less discriminantly, and

there are going to be the kinds of eyes taken out and killings that

we have seen.

So I think you can say, yeah, let’s tighten up the use, but in reality they shouldn’t be used at all. They are not used anywhere else

in Western Europe, they are not used here. There are alternatives

to crowd control. This is about crowd control in very dangerous situations. Let’s not minimize it, but at the same time let’s recognize

that police deal with dangerous crowds all over the world and they

don’t use plastic bullets.

Mr. FINUCANE. I would echo those comments very strongly and

also point to the fact that the very name of the weapon, plastic bullet, really ought to be off the landscape in Northern Ireland once

and for all, because not only is it capable of inflicting the injury

that we have seen but it carries a very haunting ring for just about

everybody. It is a cross-community issue, because they have been

used against both communities. They quite simply need to be eradicated. There are alternatives. Those alternatives ought to be used.

There are crowd control—Mr. Patten—the report itself takes a

lot of guidance from police practice in Britain, while police forces

in Britain have to deal with crowd control situations, too, and they

don’t deploy plastic bullets or PBR’s or whatever they want to call

them in Britain. So they shouldn’t be deployed in Northern Ireland.

Mr. SMITH. I was struck in reading the report, the recommendation is to close the three detention centers but not to lift the powers

that are vested in the police that make those centers infamous. Do

you think that was some kind of compromise on the Commission’s

part? The statement, like I said in my opening comments, looks

good on its face about emergency powers, but then in parentheses,

they almost carte blanche suggest that well, let’s just keep records

and see what Parliament does.

Mr. POSNER. Again, I know one of our colleagues is going to

speak to this in a few moments, but I think unanimously the

human rights groups that made submissions to the Commission

said the Commission ought to call for an end of emergency powers,

emergency legislation. It is part of the framework that allows the

police to operate as an army. If you are going to say this is a normal situation, a situation where law and rights prevail, then you

operate according to law and it ought not to be emergency law. I

think it is a missed opportunity.

Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Chairman, just some housekeeping. Not being

a Member of the Subcommittee, I just would ask unanimous consent to have my opening statement and questions entered into the

record.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection.

Mr. CROWLEY. Thank you.

Let me thank you, first of all, for holding this Subcommittee

hearing today. I am honored to be in the presence of the son of Patrick Finucane. I didn’t have the opportunity to meet your father

but I feel as though I have known him for many years, having been

32

involved in the issue of Northern Ireland, first in the State legislature of New York and now here in Congress.

Let me just make one other point about the cherry-picking issue

again. I don’t think a report of this magnitude, so detailed and in

depth in the reconstruction of the Royal Ulster Constabulary could

go without the expression of legitimate concerns by all sides, and

that means Unionists, Loyalists, Catholic, Protestant and Nationalist.

With all respect to Mr. Patten, I think this was a difficult task.

I don’t think this was an easy job to begin with. I didn’t mean to

be flippant by any means, and time was short, in making reference

to the fact that—I made note of 175 recommendations tantamount,

in essence, of totally reconstructing the RUC without actually stating that—without actually going back to the drawing board in ways

that have been accomplished in other regions like Haiti and other

countries in the world. I believe that this report is a beginning, as

was mentioned earlier by Chairman Smith.

I do think, though, that in order for there to really be peace with

justice in the north of Ireland, vetting will have to be a component

at some point. Whether it comes about because of criticism in this

report, at some point in the history of Northern Ireland, vetting

will have to be addressed. Truth and reconciliation will have to be

addressed. It is unfortunate that it was not in this report. I am

hopeful that in the future that it will happen.

In light of the fact that I have just read The Committee, and

again a book that has not gone without its criticisms, aside from

your father’s murder, there are a number of murders that are mentioned in that book, one of a police officer in the north of Ireland

who was executed apparently, supposedly, by members of the RUC,

his brothers and sisters whom he worked with on a daily basis,

solely because he was Roman Catholic, presumably of the Nationalist community.

Until individuals of that character and nature are rooted out of

the police force in the north of Ireland, it will not be a legitimate

police force.

I will add again, Commissioner Patten made reference to the fact

that we, a number of Members on this panel and this Committee

have problems with the RUC working closely with the Garda. I myself was outspoken when the PBA of the New York City Police Department invited the Garda to a boxing match, and the Garda in

turn invited the members of the RUC to participate in that match.

I was critical and was attacked by members of the RUC for not

being sensitive to what they were trying to do in bridging the police forces.

When I countered that I believe that it is an illegitimate police

force and we should not be, in this country, legitimatizing them. I

really believe that is what they are trying to do, to make themselves a legitimate force by participating in these charitable events,

to put a rosier picture on their past, I don’t think they can do that

simply by boxing, but I would not be a part of that, nor Mr. King

nor Mr. Smith.

I come from New York City. I come from a police department

that has known problems throughout its history, quite frankly;

none, more recently, than we have seen in the Bronx this year and

33

last year. We in New York City are not above saying that we have

problems with our police department. We can argue whether it is

enough. We do have a civilian complaint review board. We have a

process by which the police department is investigated both within

and outside the department.

It is just incredible that that doesn’t exist in Northern Ireland

to the degree it ought to, given the fact that there is such a divide

within that province. It is just incredible and unconscionable that

it is not being moved forward at this point in time.

I want to thank, again, Chairman Smith and I want to thank you

both for your testimony today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Crowley appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. We are joined by Congressman Kucinich from Ohio,

who is not a Member of this Committee but is very interested in

these issues and once was a Member of the Committee.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith, Mr. Crowley.

Mr. Smith, I have appreciated your longstanding commitment to

human rights all over the world. This hearing continues to reflect

that commitment that you have, a commitment that I share. In reviewing elements of the report and hearing the testimony of Mr.

Finucane and Mr. Posner, the thing that occurs to me is that while

there is much that is praiseworthy with respect to advocating

human rights-based police service, there seems to be an inherent

contradiction here. That is, as the report depends for its success on

human rights-based police service, a mechanism for enforcement of

those high principles would rely not simply on hoped-for improvements in the system, but it seems to me structurally it would rely

on a willingness of this system as we hope to see it evolve to tolerate challenges to its deficiencies. It is a structural question here.

Human rights attorneys challenged a system prior to this kind

of a report. Ten years ago, Patrick Finucane met a very unjust and

unfortunate end as a result of challenging a system that wasn’t

working and at that point the system hadn’t promised anything.

Ten years later, while people are talking about doing something

about this system, Rosemary Nelson was killed.

Now, it seems to me that unless—that first of all, because this

report ignored the issue of what happened to the attorneys who

were human rights advocates, and because the report does not recommend any external mechanisms for enforcement, no matter how

well-intentioned the sentiments may be, the report is going to have

difficulty being able to be effective, it would seem, because here you

have a system where human rights attorneys and advocates have

to worry for their safety; because that hasn’t been addressed, and

categorically there is a reason to wonder if all of this is really going

to happen and will result in an improvement of human rights,

which is what the report says it wants to do.

So the fact that Mr. Posner mentions 5,500 reports, one person

called to accountability, where is the mechanism? There is an inherent contradiction. I wanted to point that out, because we all

want to see human rights-based police service. But there has got

to be something in this system that tolerates the calling of where

the system falls short, and it is not there. Unless I missed something, it doesn’t seem to be there.

34

That is where I think this Committee, and the Chair’s insistence

on finding vehicles for pressing the issue, is very important. Your

report has some good things, but we want to make it work.

Mr. POSNER. Can I react to that very quickly? I share your sentiments exactly. It does seem to me that there are some again almost

code phrases in the report that we ought to be picking up on. One

relates to the internal structure and responsibility of the force and

of the chief constable. They use a phrase here, they say that the

chief constable should go from what he has called operational independence to operational responsibility. I don’t know exactly what

those phrases mean. It is code for something. It suggests he is less

independent than he once was. He has less responsibility, but it is

not spelled out in any concrete way.

I think one of the challenges here is going to be when there is

a lack of responsibility or when something goes wrong, what happens? Who says what to who and what happens next?

Mr. KUCINICH. You could look at it another way; that is, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Patten did condemn in very strong terms

the murder of Rosemary Nelson—that has to be noted for the

record again—notwithstanding that, it seems to me it would be

easy to hold up the report to the RUC and say, ‘‘Hey, boys, there’s

nothing in here.’’ . Mr. POSNER. Those are exactly the conversations that we have to

be most afraid of now. Externally, I think the pressure has got to

come from here, it has got to come from the U.N. and from elsewhere. People have got to say, the proof is in the pudding. We have

to see results. That is really where we are today.

Mr. KUCINICH. We also want to make it possible for attorneys

who want to stand up for human rights now to let them know that

more efforts are going to be made. Human rights attorneys, it

would seem to me, in reading this report, couldn’t take much comfort from the fact that they can keep doing their work. The report

doesn’t make it very easy for them to have some comfort when it

doesn’t mention that some people have had to pay with their lives,

and it doesn’t advocate doing anything about that.

I don’t think anyone could even comprehend the kind of suffering

your family has gone through, but let it be said that there are

those of us on the other side here who want to make sure that we

learn from those tragedies and try to help the condition improve,

so that people’s human rights can really be protected, not just with

a report. Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. I thank you very much, Mr. Kucinich. Do either of

you have anything to add? Mr. Finucane?

Mr. FINUCANE. Just in very brief response to Mr. Kucinich’s last

comment, I think it is absolutely right that the people who would

probably be most relieved when this report came out were the people who feared, with good reason, that their jobs might be on the

line. The reason Rosemary Nelson was eventually murdered was

because, within a force that had contempt for the rule of lawyers

and the work that they did and the people that they represented

and the misidentification of lawyers with the cases that they were

working on, was fostered within the institution as a whole and tacitly condoned by the government, both in the Northern Ireland office and in Westminster.

35

If that atmosphere is to be broken and the responsibility to come

down to the individual officer and back up the chain to the chief

constable that on an individual basis we will not tolerate human

rights abuses or abusers, and on that basis it needs to be made the

responsibility of every police service officer to take human rights as

their personal responsibility.

There are many ways that this can be dealt with, both through

peer pressure—and there was a suggestion of immunity or protection for those who were prepared to come forward and give details

or testimony on that, fellow officers who were guilty of the most

egregious human rights abuses. But the whole focus here and certainly in terms of defense attorneys and in terms of human rights

abuses as a whole is that these things must never be allowed to

happen again. That was the focus of certainly my work and the

work of everybody else here. Sadly we couldn’t protect Rosemary.

But the people who can and should have protected her are still

there. The government that should have protected her is still in office, and they can’t be let off the hook. They have responsibilities.

They said they would do this. The force, if you believe the public

pronouncements, is prepared and willing to change. Let’s call them

up on that and keep the pressure on. Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much.

Mr. Finucane, Mr. Posner, thank you.

I would like to ask our third panel if they would proceed to the

table.

Maggie Beirne has served since 1995 as the Research and Policy

Officer to the Committee on the Administration of Justice, CAJ, a

cross-community group based in Belfast. Before that, Ms. Byrne

worked for 17 years at the International Secretariat of Amnesty

International and was a member of the Amnesty senior management team.

Julia Hall is Northern Ireland Researcher and Counsel to

Human Rights Watch. Ms. Hall earned her J.D. At the State University of New York at Buffalo school of law and holds a certificate

of international law from the Hague Academy of International Law

and has been a great source of accurate and timely information

about human rights to this Subcommittee for years. We do thank

her for that.

Jane Winter is the Director of the British Irish Rights Watch.

Prior to her work with that organization, she was the Project Coordinator for the Public Law Project. Her past experience includes

work on welfare rights, employment and immigration issues for

both the Battersea Law Center and the Citizens Advice Bureau in

the United Kingdom.

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Beirne, if you could begin.

STATEMENT OF MAGGIE BEIRNE, COMMITTEE ON THE

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, BELFAST

Ms. BEIRNE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to first thank you for

your invitation to testify today. We would also like to join with

many of the other speakers in thanking this Committee for their

excellent scrutiny that it has given to concerns about human rights

in Northern Ireland and the bipartisan approach that you have

taken. The CAJ, as you know, is an independent human rights orVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:14 Feb 12, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\64523 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
36

ganization based in Northern Ireland. We work across a wide range

of human rights and civil liberties concerns and have been working

on policing since 1981.

As early as 1995, CAJ argued for an independent international

Commission to look into future policing in Northern Ireland, and

we worked to ensure that reference to such a body was included

in the Good Friday Agreement. We welcomed the broad terms of

reference given to the Commission by the Agreement and sought

to work constructively with the Commission as soon as it came into

being under the leadership of Chris Patten.

We were fortunate enough to have secured earlier funding from

the Ford Foundation and others to undertake a major comparative

research project into good policing practice in a variety of jurisdictions around the world.

The findings arising from that study have underpinned all our

work with the Commission. In fact, we relayed some of those findings to your Committee earlier this year. We believe that they have

proved useful to the Commission in its work. This shouldn’t be surprising, since we think that the policing problems in Northern Ireland differ in degree rather than nature from those faced by many

other countries around the world. In fact, some of those analogies

have been already made this morning.

As you know, the Patten Commission worked for over 15 months,

studied well over 2,000 written submissions, held hundreds of

meetings and received personal testimony from a wide variety of

people. CAJ attended many of the meetings and studied the submissions of the political parties and other key social partners.

What was apparent to us was that despite the difficulties and disagreement, there was also a surprising level of consensus across

the political divide about key aspects of the way forward.

In order to buildupon that consensus, we organized a conference

in February of this year which brought together a very diverse audience of statutory groups, the police, government bodies, local

party politicians, voluntary groups and community activists across

the Republican and Loyalist communities.

On the basis of those exchanges, we developed a series of human

rights benchmarks for policing change, and we would like to have

those benchmarks read into the record, if that is acceptable.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, they will be made part of the

record.

Ms. BEIRNE. Thank you. Those benchmarks go into some more

detail—but as a minimum, we would propose major recommendations in the area of dealing with under representation of Catholics,

Nationalists, women and ethnic minorities, issues of accountability

to the law, the overhaul of police training, the creation of a neutral

working environment, the creation of new structures, and developing greater democratic accountability.

Overall, the whole package of change should be tested against its

ability to deliver policing arrangements, which would mean that

you would never again have to listen to the testimony you heard

this morning from Michael Finucane about the death of his father,

or a case that is very close to you, that of Rosemary Nelson whom

you heard from just last year—and that we in Northern Ireland

never have to experience such abuses again.

37

In general terms, we think the Commission has made a very genuine and constructive effort to meet the difficult task imposed on

it by the Agreement. They have addressed all of the issues that we

have referred to above and put forward many thoughtful and positive recommendations about the way forward. Most importantly,

they have recognized, as did the Agreement, that just as human

rights must be at the heart of a just and peaceful society in Northern Ireland, it must be at the heart of future policing arrangements.

In spite of these positive comments, we still nevertheless have

some important reservations. Other colleagues will refer to major

concerns we all share with regard to the failure of the Commission

to put in place a mechanism to deal with officers who have committed human rights abuses in the past. This issue has already

been addressed several times this morning, and Julia Hall will be

talking to it directly, but it is obviously a concern that we share.

Also, their failure to end the use of plastic bullets and, particularly

relevant again to much of the testimony you received this morning,

the Commission’s failure to lend its voice to the importance of defense lawyers being intimidated or even killed in carrying out their

work.

This particular testimony, while sharing the concerns of those

who preceded or will follow us, will concentrate on two specific

issues that perhaps have had less attention in the debate so far.

One is Emergency Powers and the other is accountability.

Emergency Powers have been a feature of life in Northern Ireland since the 1920’s. The legislation allows the police to stop and

search without reasonable suspicion, initially to hold detainees for

48 hours and then, with further authorization, up to a total of 7

days, and to deny access to a solicitor for the first 48 hours and

for periods thereafter. Combining this with the removal of the right

to silence, the removal of the right to jury trial, the weight which

can be placed on confession evidence alone and the absence, until

recently, of video- or audio taping of interrogations, such powers

lead to serious human rights abuses, including serious ill treatment

of detainees and the abuse and intimidation of defense lawyers.

It is clear that if these abusive powers are not removed, the risk

is very high that officers, even in a new police service with a new

uniform, a new oath and better training, are likely to continue to

abuse human rights. This, anyway, is the experience around the

world, so we have no reason to think that Northern Ireland would

be any different.

Yet in the Policing Commission’s report, this fundamental issue

gets two paragraphs. They cite academics McGarry and O’Leary

(John McGarry also testified to you earlier this year) that much of

the dissatisfaction with policing, in both Loyalist and Republican

areas, stems from the use of Emergency Powers. Our own belief,

shared by all the other human rights organizations present, is that

the Commission should have recommended the immediate repeal of

emergency laws, and argued for a reliance on the ordinary criminal

law. Certainly the logic of their emphasis on international human

rights standards would suggest that frequent U.N. Calls for the repeal of emergency legislation should have been heeded.

38

Again to pick up on some of the earlier comments, the language

on respect of rights has to then be explored in terms of formal recommendations. The failure to make such a recommendation is all

the more inexplicable when looking at the current security situation in Northern Ireland, which it could be argued poses a much

smaller risk to the average person living in London or Manchester

and probably a lot less than Washington, D.C.

The second issue I would like to focus on is that of accountability. Of all the topics tackled, this is probably the one where

Patten responded most effectively to the oft-repeated concerns of

the general public about the need for greater accountability. There

are many positive recommendations.

However, at least two important problems remain. Patten endorses all the proposals about a more effective complaints system

included in an earlier report by Dr. Hayes and urges that those

findings be implemented. It is clear, therefore, that the Commission intended that the authorities tackle the unacceptably high

standard of proof required in complaints against the police. Yet no

specific recommendation is made to this effect, and there is a risk,

obviously, if there is no specific recommendation, that it will be

overlooked and that we won’t get a really credible complaint system.

Another concern under the rubric of accountability is the role

that is envisaged for democratic control at the local level. It appears to us that the recommendation to establish district policing

partnership boards which are merely—and I quote from the report—advisory, explanatory and consultative, will have little or no

greater powers than their largely disparaged predecessors.

Despite these concerns and the others raised by my colleagues,

I want to emphasize again that we found much of great value in

the Commission’s work.

It is for this reason that this submission will conclude with a

number of specific requests to this congressional Subcommittee.

Firstly, CAJ believes, along with our human rights colleagues,

that many of these policing changes are long overdue. Many of

them have been urged on the government for years by various U.N.

Bodies and its own independent assessors. While the Patten report

doesn’t deliver everything that we had hoped and indeed think necessary to real change, people concerned about the protection of

human rights certainly cannot settle for anything less. The Secretary of State has suggested a period of consultation, and following that there is no excuse for further delay.

Congress should urge the U.K. Government to move rapidly to

implement the various positive recommendations in Patten’s report.

Second, implementation is everything, as I said in my last testimony before Congressman Gilman’s International Relations Committee. We argued that Patten’s report couldn’t be allowed to gather dust and warmly welcome the proposal to establish an Oversight

Commissioner to report publicly and regularly on progress

achieved. This proposal is all the more important given the early

emphasis placed by the Chief Constable on the need to implement

any eventual changes only as and when the improving security situation allows it. In fact, the logic of Patten is that human rights

39

abuses have fed and fueled the conflict and that human rights protection, and therefore policing change, must be at the heart of a

just and fair society.

Apart from being important in and of itself, it is this goal which

will most effectively undermine violence. It is therefore vitally important that Congress continue to keep a watching brief on developments and monitor closely the process of implementation.

Third, there will be no or little effective change in policing if the

criminal justice system itself does not change. If judges continue to

be unrepresentative of society as a whole, if the prosecution system

doesn’t operate in a sufficiently transparent and independent way,

and if there is a remarkable predisposition on the part of the judicial system to always rely on the testimony of police officers,

changes elsewhere will be undermined.

The significance of the criminal justice review, which will be reporting in a few weeks’ time, cannot be overstated. In this regard

I would ask to have read into the record material from the journalist Ed Moloney in relation to his harassment in the Pat

Finucane case and the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

We would ask that Members monitor this case and the criminal

justice review very closely and make representations to government

accordingly.

The U.S. Congress has kindly, particularly in recent years, devoted much time and energy to the problems of Northern Ireland.

If we have one message to give, it is that your work isn’t over just

yet. Peace processes are difficult and dangerous things, with the

ability to fail as well as succeed. Securing good policing will be a

crucial building block for long-term stability and true peace and

justice in Northern Ireland.

We are moving in the right direction, but continued vigilance will

be necessary if we are to be ultimately successful. We hope that

human rights groups, local as well as international, can continue

to look to you for your support around our concerns.

On the impending anniversary of Rosemary Nelson’s testimony

to this meeting, it seems the least we can all do is commit ourselves to trying to make sure that the policing problems she testified about to your Committee are effectively remedied for the future.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Beirne appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Beirne, thank you very much for your excellent

testimony and for the good work that CAJ does.

On my trip to Belfast a couple of years ago, you and Martin

O’Brien and others were extraordinarily helpful in helping us to

understand in our fact-finding mission, the reality as divorced from

the multiple fictions that are out there. I do thank you for that.

The fact that you see Protestants and Catholics alike, it does not

matter, all that you care about is human rights, just makes your

work all the more credible and we are very grateful for it.

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Hall.

STATEMENT OF JULIA HALL, NORTHERN IRELAND

RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Ms. HALL. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for inviting Human

Rights Watch here again to participate in this very important

40

meeting. So very much has been said already about vetting in

Northern Ireland’s police force, but I will try my best to keep my

comments both relevant and brief.

First let me say that we recognize the enormity of the task presented to the Patten Commission and that the final report does indeed contain many progressive proposals for fundamental change.

We are particularly pleased that the Commission proposes a new

human rights- based approach and makes many recommendations

toward that end.

However, Human Rights Watch fears that, in the end, the Commission may have undermined its own handiwork by failing to include critical recommendations in the report regarding accountability mechanisms for past human rights violations committed by

the RUC. As you know from my testimony last April before the

International Affairs Committee, Human Rights Watch recommended to the Patten Commission that an independent vetting

unit be established to screen out currently serving RUC officers

with poor human rights records. Indeed this was perhaps the single

most important issue in any of the submissions that Human Rights

Watch made to the Commission. We proposed a model for such a

unit and listed primary and secondary source material that could

be evaluated by a vetting unit for evidence of abusive police conduct. We also recommended, quite importantly, that all officers

enjoy the full range of procedural safeguards established under

international law to protect their fundamental due process rights.

One might ask why we proposed such a process. As a matter of

fact, more than one member of the Policing Commission told us

that such a proposal would be politically explosive. Of course, we

understand this. But we believe that Chairman Patten’s stated primary goal of depoliticizing policing, as he said this morning, should

begin from the beginning.

To be frank, most change in Northern Ireland terms is seen as

politically explosive, and while it is important for the Patten Commission report to be considered on its merits by all sides of the

community, politically expedient positions should not have been

part of the Commission’s mandate. If Northern Ireland is to finally

enjoy membership in the community of peaceful, democratic nations, and indeed take a genuine human rights-based approach to

policing, it must be prepared to engage in what is an emerging

global norm toward international justice. That is, the people, political leaders, police and the community at large, must consider embracing the notion that impunity for human rights violations has

no place in a society governed and policed by democratic principles.

The trend toward international justice, holding accountable those

State actors who have committed egregious human rights abuses,

is illustrated by the Pinochet case, the ongoing work of the ad hoc

tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the vetting

of the police force in post conflict Bosnia, upon which our model for

vetting in Northern Ireland was itself based. The message is clear

that human rights abusers must be held accountable, not as a matter of revenge or retribution, but as a matter of justice. We believe

that such accountability forms the bridge between the past and the

future and builds confidence in new peacetime structures and arrangements.

41

Human Rights Watch welcomes the Patten Commission’s observations in chapter 5 of the report that proper accountability for police misconduct has not been achieved in Northern Ireland. We

have argued this point repeatedly with the RUC, as I know you

have, and with the government for a number of years. The rote response from both law enforcement and government officials has

been that there are numerous safeguards built into the system and

that the RUC already is the most scrutinized police force in Europe.

We are deeply, deeply disappointed, however, that despite the

unequivocal recognition that the RUC has not been committed to

human rights-based policing in the past and has not been held accountable for its actions, the Patten Commission makes no recommendations regarding vetting. A mechanism for accountability

for past human rights violations would lay a firm foundation for

the future policing arrangements that the Commission has so carefully contemplated. It would send a strong message that human

rights abuse will not be tolerated in the new service and would

have provided a fair mechanism by which chronic and other violent

abusers would be made to answer for egregious violations committed with impunity.

Interestingly, the Patten Commission readily accepts the position

put forward by Human Rights Watch and many other human

rights groups in the course of the consultation process that abusive

police conduct, tolerated by the RUC as an institution, has, in fact,

occurred in the past, which makes its omission, the omission of this

issue in the report, all the more striking. I quote very briefly from

the Commission’s report:

‘‘we are in no doubt that the RUC has had several officers within

its ranks over the years who have abused their position. Many supporters of the RUC and both serving and retired officers have spoken to us about ’bad apples.’ it is not satisfactory to suggest, as

some people have, that one should somehow accept that every organization has such bad apples. They should be dealt with.

‘‘it is not simply individual officers who have been at fault here.

We are not persuaded that the RUC has in the past had adequate

systems in place to monitor and, when necessary, act upon complaints against officers.’’ .

Now, despite such strong and unequivocal language, the Patten

Commission itself fails to provide a mechanism by which such bad

apples can be dealt with, and the RUC can be held accountable for

institutional tolerance, if not outright complicity, in the Commission of past human rights violations. In the absence of a screening

process to weed out and exclude those officers with abusive records,

the bad apples and the RUC as an institution are effectively offered

a grant of amnesty by the Patten Commission.

This is unacceptable and it clearly violates the international

norm that every person whose rights have been violated shall have

an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been

committed by persons acting in an official capacity. Such a grant

of amnesty for past abuses also violates the international norm

that perpetrators of human rights violations shall be brought to

justice.

42

A profoundly disturbing aspect of the Commission’s failure to

provide such an accountability mechanism lies in the naive assumption that Catholics and Nationalists will join the new policing

service based solely on the promise of forward-looking arrangements. The commissioners urge the people of Northern Ireland to

forget the past and embark on a fresh start with respect to policing. Claiming that Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly in 1998

to turn its back on the politics of revenge and retaliation, the Commission confuses retribution with justice and revenge with upholding the rule of law.

The Patten Commission report claims too much when it equates

approval of the Good Friday Agreement with a desire and willingness to forget past human rights violations. Indeed, during the consultation process, commissioners were inundated by both written

submissions and oral testimony offered at community meetings by

people who have suffered violations at the hands of the RUC and

are still seeking effective redress.

If the people of Northern Ireland wanted to forget the past, they

would not have wasted valuable time and emotional energy informing the Commission that it is justice for violations suffered that

will lay a firm foundation for their acceptance of any new policing

structures and arrangements.

Thus, the Commission has failed to lay the necessary groundwork for one of its most critical recommendations, that, and I

quote, ‘‘All community leaders, including political party leaders and

local counselors, should take steps to remove all discouragements

to Members of their communities applying to join the police, and

make it a priority to encourage them to apply.’’ We fear that it is highly unlikely, given the evident requirement

of many people that abusive officers be held accountable, particularly in the Catholic and Nationalist communities wherein a disproportionate number of such abuses occurred, that a large segment of the population will ever have the confidence to join a new

policing service that retains officers responsible for well-documented egregious human rights violations.

Ms. HALL. I would like to offer very briefly two examples of how

the absence of a screening process could undermine recommendations made in the policing report. With respect to the holding centers, Human Rights Watch welcomes the Commission’s recommendation to close them. However, the Patten Commission fails

to acknowledge in any part of the report that the reason appropriate for closure has been sustained and gained momentum over

the years is that conditions in the centers, supported by provisions

of emergence of legislation, create the environments conducive to

the physical and psychological abuse of detainees.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture has repeatedly

called for the closure of the holding centers for this very reason.

There is in fact a small cadre of easily identifiable RUC detectives

who have been responsible for conducting abusive interrogations in

the centers for many, many years.

According to the Commission’s ‘‘forget the past philosophy,’’ these

detectives would now be appointed to serve in regular police stations where political suspects will be held after the centers are

closed, or perhaps they will be placed in the general policing popuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:14 Feb 12, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\64523 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
43

lation to gain experience at community policing. They will, in effect, be offered amnesty for their abusive practice.

It is very difficult to expect potential new recruits to serve side

by side with officers so easily identified as human rights violators

in the holding centers. I would just draw your attention again to

the case of David Adams, a man who was brutally assaulted in

Castlereagh in 1994, and in 1998 he was given the highest award

of damages ever made against the RUC and just last month we understand that the DPP has called for no criminal prosecutions for

actions that truly amount to torture.

Now, those officers will have not been critically prosecuted, have

not been disciplined by the RUC, and continue to serve in posts in

the RUC and over other detainees. Under the Patten formula, we

see no way out in terms of their officers. They are in. They will be

included in the new policing service. They will be given opportunities to, so called, change and advance, despite what is an egregious,

egregious action against David Adams.

Second, I would just like to point very quickly to the issue of Special Branch and then close up.

Much could be said about the violations that have occurred as a

result of Special Branch practices. Credible allegations of collusion

with loyalist paramilitaries have consistently plagued the branch,

and the recent startling revelations about Special Branch complicity in the murder of Patrick Finucane, as we heard this morning, have simply refueled urgent calls for the government to establish an independent inquiry into the killing; yet there is no recommendation in the Patten report that Special Branch be evaluated to determine past abusive practices or, more significantly and

something that we had called for, for the branch—for that particular piece of RUC to be disbanded and for it to be replaced with

a more accountable unit.

This is highly, highly problematic given the controversial nature

of the policing undertaken by Special Branch in the past.

To close, under the Patten Commission’s imperative to forget the

past, the police officers in these examples, potentially responsible

for human rights violations as egregious as to the prohibition

against taking the right to life and the prohibition against torture,

are offered amnesty for abusive conduct and to remain on active

service in the police. This is an insult to the concept of justice and

it threatens to undermine extremely worthy efforts recommended

in the report.

Therefore, we urge the Patten Commission and the Government

of the U.K. To reconsider—we are truly asking them to do something quite significant, and that is to reconsider the consequences

of this omission and we urge the Subcommittee and others with a

genuine interest in entrenching the rule of law into Northern Ireland to advocate urgently for some kind of mechanism to be included into this report during the consultation process.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hall appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much for your testimony and for the

good work that you have done for many years on this.

We do have a vote on the floor. As a matter of fact, we have four

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44

tainly understand it. It may take as long as about 35 to 40 minutes

before any of us can return, if that is OK with you, because you

have come across from London to be with us and we do want to

hear what you have to say, Ms. Winter. We will be in temporary

recess. If you have to go, we will submit questions to you in writing.

[Recess.]

Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will resume its sitting. I want to

apologize for the long delay because of the voting on the floor, but

Ms. Winter, your comments will be disseminated through the hearing record, and I thank you in advance for your patience.

STATEMENT OF JANE WINTER, DIRECTOR, BRITISH IRISH

RIGHTS WATCH

Ms. WINTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to this

honorable Committee for inviting me to speak today, and particularly, Mr. Chairman, to you for your consistent concern about

human rights issues in Northern Ireland.

We join with our colleagues in welcoming the Patten report and

its many positive recommendations. However, we also share the

concerns that our colleagues have expressed today.

I would like to concentrate if I may on just one aspect of the report, which is the use of plastic bullets. I would ask that the full

report that we have submitted be read into the record.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection your full report will be made a part

of the report.

Ms. WINTER. British Irish Watch is opposed to the deployment of

plastic bullets because we regard them as a lethal weapon that

should have no place in policing in a democratic society at the end

of the 20th Century.

Rubber bullets were introduced in Northern Ireland in 1970, and

continued to be used until 1975. Plastic bullets were introduced in

1973. Mr. Payne has already graphically illustrated the size and

weight of plastic bullets which are made of a much harder substance than rubber bullets. A plastic bullet fired at 50 yards distance can be fatal or cause very serious injury. Most plastic bullets

are in fact fired at much closer range, even sometimes at pointblank range, and the guidelines for their use recommend a minimum distance of only 20 yards.

Problems have occurred with the manufacture and use of plastic

bullets. Batches of them have been found to be too fast or too heavy

for safety, and independent observers have observed the guns that

are used to fire the bullets jamming and overheating when they are

used repeatedly. Although intended as a non-lethal weapon of riot

control, 17 people have died as a result of the use of rubber and

plastic bullets.

Rubber bullets have resulted in 3 deaths, and plastic bullets in

14. The ratio of deaths to bullets fired shows that plastic bullets

are more than 4 times as deadly as rubber bullets, even though

they were intended to be more safe.

Of the 17 people killed by plastic bullets, there are a number of

startling factors that come to light. All but one of the victims were

Catholic. Nine of the 17 were age 18 or under, the youngest being

only 10 years old. Only 5 of the victims were aged over 21. The maVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:14 Feb 12, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\64523 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
45

jority of the victims were not involved in rioting at the time that

they were shot. Many of the victims were shot at much too close

a range and were struck in the head or the upper body in contravention of the guidelines then in force. Six of the victims did not

die immediately, but lingered for between 1 and 15 days. They are

a horrific weapon.

According to the report of the Patten Commission, 615 people

have been injured by plastics bullets since 1981. The report does

not give the origin of this figure but we believe that it is almost

certainly an underestimate.

The fact that the last fatality caused by a plastic bullet happened

in 1989 does not indicate that plastic bullets are used less often,

nor does it mean that they are any safer. A solicitor in Northern

Ireland put in a submission to the Patten Commission concerning

his professional experience of dealing with cases of injury caused

by plastic bullets. By June 1998 he had settled 17 out of 24 cases

arising out of the disturbances around the marching seasons of

1996 and 1997. None of those cases went to court, and yet he attained the sum of 428,000 pounds, nearly half a million pounds, in

damages for his clients.

The cases that he represented involved very serious injury, including two people who had each lost an eye, fractured jaws, other

eye injuries, and injuries to the back, chest, and abdomen.

The guidelines for plastic bullets say that they should be fired so

as to strike the target in the lower part of the body. It is obvious

that in the majority of these cases, those guidelines were not followed. Several of the injuries were life-threatening and have resulted in permanent maiming and scarring. It is simply a matter

of luck that nobody was killed.

In April 1999 a group of five senior doctors published their findings concerning people who have been injured in a single week between the 8th and the 14th of July 1996 by plastic bullets. During

that week 8,165 plastic bullets were fired throughout Northern Ireland. They treated 155 patients who had sustained between them

172 injuries. Forty-two patients had to be admitted to hospital, 3

of them to intensive care. The age of the patients ranged between

14 and 54 years, most of them being young men.

Those doctors’ findings show that at least 39 percent of the injuries sustained were to the upper part of the body, in contravention

of the guidelines and they were all life-threatening injuries. So although it is a matter of rejoicing that nobody has been killed since

1989; it is not a matter of judgment, it is a matter of luck.

The domestic law on the use of lethal force falls short of the

international standards set by the European Convention on Human

Rights. Despite the fact that the guidelines for the use of plastic

bullets have been flouted on a number of occasions, no member of

the security forces has been prosecuted for causing a death in such

circumstances. The use of plastic bullets is also contrary to the

spirit and intention of the United Nations Basic Principles on the

Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, to which

the United Kingdom Government subscribes. There has been much

domestic and international concern expressed about plastic bullets.

In May 1982 the European Parliament voted to ban the use of

plastic bullets throughout the European Community. In 1995, the

46

United Nations Committee Against Torture mentioned plastic bullets as a matter of concern, and in 1998 they recommended the

abolition of the use of plastic bullet rounds as a means of riot control.

There also has been concern in the U.S. Mr. Payne has spoken

of his bill. In 1995, the Honorable John Shattuck, who was then

the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and

Labor called for the elimination of such deadly security measures

as the use of plastic bullets for civilian crowd control. In January

1996, the international body charged with considering decommissioning in Northern Ireland chaired by former Senator George

Mitchell called for a review of the situation with respect to the use

of plastic bullets.

In 1996, the CAJ organized systematic independent observation

across Northern Ireland of the way that the RUC policed the summer marching season, and they were able to publish an authoritative report which highlighted a number of serious concerns about

the RUC’s actions, including their excessive use of plastic bullets,

and the fact that again in a single week between the 7th and 14th

of July that year, more than 8 times as many plastic bullets were

used against Nationalists as were used again Unionists.

Following the publication of the report, the government asked

the body that inspects police services in the U.K. To make a particularly close study of the way in which the RUC deployed plastic

bullets. Their report expressed concern about the training, the command structure, and the reporting system for plastic bullets, and

highlighted the weaker guidelines for their deployment which pertained in Northern Ireland.

Until August 1997, the guidelines for use of plastic bullets were

not publicly available. When they were finally made public, it became apparent that the guidelines issued to the RUC and those

issued to the army were not the same, despite the fact that both

arms of the security forces frequently fired plastic bullets together

at the same event. Although plastic bullets have never been used

in England and Wales, guidelines for their use there were much

more restrictive than those pertaining until very recently in Northern Ireland, where 17 people have died.

On the 1st of August, following a review of the use of plastic bullets by the Association of Chief Police Officers, new rules were

brought in that will apply across the board. Although this tightening of the rules is welcome, it is no substitute for the banning

of plastic bullets altogether. Moreover, it opens up the possibility

that this lethal weapon will now be deployed in England and Wales

as well as Northern Ireland, only months after the United Nations

recommended the abolition of their use.

There is another worrying aspect of the new guidelines. They define the lower part of the body as being below the rib cage. This

does not take account of the medical evidence which suggests that

injuries to the abdomen can be equally life-threatening.

On average, just over 1,000 plastic bullets were fired each year

between 1982 and 1995. In 1996, however, 8,165 plastic bullets

were fired in a single week during the Drumcree crisis. In 1997,

some 2,500 plastic bullets were fired during the equivalent week.

In 1998, 823 plastic bullets were fired. In 1999, according to the

47

RUC, only one plastic bullet was fired. Furthermore, the use of

plastic bullets has decreased each year since 1996, although that

decrease must be seen in the context of a sharp increase in the period 1996–1998 over the previous 7 years.

Obviously the decrease in the use of bullets is to be welcomed,

but there are many reasons in the current situation which can account for that decrease. They include the growing domestic and

international concern about the use of plastic bullets, the relative

increase in the level of Unionist protests and the decrease in Nationalist protests. This has been particularly marked since 1998

when, for the first time, the Orange Order was prevented from

marching down the Garvaghy Road.

The improving climate in which civil unrest has occurred, as the

cease-fires, imperfect as they are, have endured, and with the

strong public support for the Good Friday Agreement, sustained political efforts to reach accommodation of the contentious marchers

have helped to defuse the situation. It has also been the review of

guidelines for the use of plastic bullets by the Association of Chief

Police Officers, and not least of all, the setting up of the Patten

Commission which put the RUC under the closest scrutiny that it

has ever experienced. It is not surprising that we have seen a decrease in the use of these plastic bullets.

The Patten Commission has expressed concern that the government, the police authority and the RUC have collectively failed to

invest more time and money in a search for an acceptable alternative to plastic bullets. However, they have felt unable to recommend that they should no longer be used but instead have recommended that a search for an alternative should be intensified.

They have recommended tougher guidelines and more accountability for their use.

In our view, this is a disappointing stance. Plastic bullets have

never been deployed for riot control in England and Wales despite

the occurrence over the years of a number of serious and violent

riots, including race riots. English police forces have been able to

police these riots without recourse to plastic bullets, and although

police officers, demonstrators, and members of the public have all

been injured on occasion, they have still not resulted in loss of life

or anything like the number of injuries that have been caused by

plastic bullets. It is simply not the case that the RUC would have

no other means at its disposal than hand-held batons or live ammunition were it to abandon the use of plastic bullets. Indeed, its

claim to have fired only one plastic bullet during the week of

Drumcree this year shows that the RUC is capable of policing some

situations of serious public unrest without resorting to plastic bullets.

In conclusion, in our opinion, once plastic bullets are available to

a police force, their use becomes inevitable; and once they are used,

experience shows that abuse also becomes inevitable. Although

physically different than live ammunition, both in form and effect,

the firing of plastic bullets from a weapon has the same psychological effect on police officers as the use of an actual firearm. They

give the police officer concerned such a disproportionate advantage

over an unarmed civilian, however riotous his or her behavior, that

the officer is very likely to resort to it as a means of self-protection

48

that can be operated at a relatively safe distance from any opponent. This may also mean that the police officers will fail to make

use of any opportunity that may exist or arise for diffusing violent

situations by less draconian means that might be attempted by unarmed officers.

We recognize that however well trained police officers may be,

and however tight the guidelines under which they operate, in the

heat of the moment and especially in fear of their own safety or

that of their colleagues, they are likely to overreact. Furthermore,

the use of plastic bullets, especially if it appears to be indiscriminate, may provoke an already riotous crowd to become even more

violent.

A weapon that has caused so many fatal and serious injuries

during its history is unsuitable for use in any civilized democracy.

Finally, I would like, if I may, to honor the memory of Rosemary

Nelson and Patrick Finucane, who have been mentioned so many

times today, and say that we would like to see the Patten report

implemented in its entirety, without cherry-picking. But as you

said this morning, Mr. Chairman, we do not regard it as a ceiling,

we regard it as a beginning, and we hope that in implementing it,

it will be possible to introduce improvements such as abolishing the

use of plastic bullets. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you for the excellent testimony and the good

work that you do in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Winter appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Tancredo, the gentleman from Colorado, has

joined us.

Mr. Payne.

Mr. PAYNE. In my concluding remarks, I certainly appreciate the

three of you coming over and your testimony. As you know, I was

there in 1996 when so many of them were shot. I went to Derry

and was in Belfast and spoke to RUC people and it just—the attitude is really something when they won’t answer questions, they

won’t give you their names or the badge number, they have very

short answers. They were very rude and intimidating to the people

that I traveled with.

Plastic bullets should be banned. I am reintroducing my legislation again. We are going to urge the manufacturers in the United

States to stop manufacturing them. We are going to urge the British Government to stop using them. There are other alternatives

to riot control other than shooting people with real bullets or shooting people with plastic bullets. Those are extremes, and there are

many other ways to deal with crowd control, and I think that the

RUC needs to get into the 21st century.

I appreciate the Chairman for calling this very important hearing again. Incidentally, I met with Rosemary Nelson in 1996 when

I was there—either 1995 or 1996, I am not sure—but we had a

meeting on people being detained without charges and so many

things. I was here when she testified, and so we certainly have her

memory and keep the memory of Pat Finucane alive. Also I keep

saying that the Bloody Sunday incident of 1972 needs to be reopened and there should be a comprehensive restudy of that, reinvestigation of that situation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

49

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Let me ask a couple of final questions

and one on behalf of Mr. Gilman. He is asking how many of the

17 killed in Northern Ireland were engaged in throwing petrol

bombs,as referred to by Chairman Patten. In the actual report, it

says the unique problem which has explained their use in Northern

Ireland is the widespread use of petrol bombs, glass bombs, and

firearms in riot situations. Were the people who got killed throwing

bombs? Do we know?

Ms. WINTER. The majority of them were not. As I have said, 8

of them were children, and I think some of the circumstances are

disputed, but it seems that only 2 of the 17 can certainly be said

to have been involved in rioting. To the best of my knowledge they

were throwing stones not petrol bombs. So the fatalities are not

linked to petrol bombing, as far as I know.

I wonder if I can make one brief comment in response to what

Mr. Payne said with regard to identification. That is one recommendation, that all police officers in riot situations in Northern

Ireland must wear clear identification. I recalled that Rosemary

Nelson was assaulted on the Garvaghy Road in 1996 by police officers wearing no identification, and she spoke publicly about that

incident and she said that she had never been so frightened in the

whole of her life.

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask, have any of you heard comments—as you

probably know, we have an amendment that passed that links cooperation and training between the FBI and the RUC with independent investigations into the murders of Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson and also, generally speaking, to stepped-up protections for defense attorneys. It is in conference now. It is on my bill,

but we are running into some flak from the administration as well

from a few Senators.

Would that amendment be helpful? Does it send a clear message?

There is a mechanism by which the President would certify that

these conditions have been met and then such a sharing of personnel—particularly their personnel coming here, mostly to

Quantico, Virginia—would go forward.

Ms. HALL. I was actually very struck by Chairman Patten’s first

point this morning about calling on all of you not to isolate the

RUC, and I said that is an interesting place to put the burden, on

the Committee as opposed to the RUC itself for creating the very

conditions which led to you all coming up with the amendment.

From the Human Rights Watch perspective, it is the RUC that

is responsible for activities that have led to these types of sanctions

and these types of proposals. Not just by yourselves; there have

been other Western governments and other European bodies that

have also come out with very strong statements against these activities.

So I would switch the onus back onto the RUC and say given the

egregious number of violations, given the mounting evidence of

State-sponsored collusion in these cases, you feel that it is incumbent upon you and you simply have no recourse but to say, as does

the Leahy amendment in other circumstances, that this government simply will not tolerate these types of violations without some

kind of effective remedy for the families.

50

So, I think from our perspective we support this resolution and

we find it to be a very interesting and new way of approaching

RUC abuses.

Mr. PAYNE. One other area that I note in the past, and I don’t

know about present, but the soldiers that would be sent to the

north of Ireland were generally young, unseasoned chaps who probably were frightened by tales and stories. I also thought that that

was a bad practice, to put in inexperienced persons, who are not

properly trained.

Another incident is the fact that some officers, either police or

military, who have created some questionable behavior in Great

Britain, were transferred to the north of Ireland and integrated

into the force there, which is also I think makes no sense, if you

have a tense situation, to bring in people who have a history of bad

behavior.

Finally, the vehicles—I have never seen vehicles like that anywhere but in the north of Ireland. They are enough to be intimidating as they ride with their low running boards and the dragging

near the ground. It reminded me of vehicles that the South Africans created called caspers; no other place you saw a vehicle like

that. This vehicle is almost coming to tell you, ‘‘We are here, we

are tough, you can’t bother us or we will roll you over’’. Those are

psychological intimidations to people, and they should be stopped.

Mr. SMITH. One final question and then I would make a comment.

I continue to believe, and I think you do as well, that the lack

of vetting is probably the Achilles heel of the report and does have

to be approached and handled by a future or present body and by

the government.

What is your take on Chris Patten’s statements earlier, especially his ‘‘witch hunt’’ statement?

Ms. HALL. I suspect that many people were taken aback by that,

as I was. It is not only a poor analogy, it is very misplaced and

very melodramatic. We must remember that most of the witches

were innocent.

What we are talking about in terms of a vetting process is something that is guarded by all of the due process rights that are guaranteed to every person under international law. To make sure that

those safeguards are in place makes that analogy completely inappropriate.

I think that really both Dr. Hayes and Mr. Patten need to be

continually reminded of the inappropriateness of that, and the fact

that vetting mechanisms as suggested by ourselves and the groups

at this table are in place and have been in place in other regions

of the world and other jurisdictions.

When we met with the Patten Commission yesterday in New

York, we told them that the one weak link in every single peace

agreement that Human Rights Watch has looked at is the absence

of an effective vetting mechanism. It is the one thing that has

brought down future arrangements for policing or rearrangements

in military relations in almost every jurisdiction. We see it as a

critical problem in the Israeli-Palestinian issue and with South Africa with the 5-year amnesty for police officers.

51

So I think the empirical evidence of other jurisdictions not having this mechanism, coupled with a very respectful but firm analysis of why the analogy is inappropriate, should really force them

to drop that language from their justification for not vetting.

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Winter.

Ms. WINTER. I agree very much with my colleague, and I would

also add that to describe calling to account people who have abused

the human rights of others as a witch hunt is clearly inappropriate,

and I think to make special pleading for the RUC, I believe in any

society we get the police that we deserve, and we should keep our

own police under the most intense scrutiny because we give them

extraordinary powers that ordinary citizens are not allowed to

have.

For the RUC to say we are immune from scrutiny, we can get

away with it, is to offer us a police service that we do not deserve,

and I think the Patten Commission has left them far too much leeway in this respect.

I hope in the review process that is coming up, the government

will take the opportunity to improve upon what is in the Patten report and rethink this vetting issue.

Ms. BEIRNE. First, on the screening process and the vetting, I

think it is absolutely crucial; accountability is at the heart of getting policing right in Northern Ireland. This is the focus of my testimony, the last half of it, of my testimony to the International Relations Committee.

This issue of dealing with past human rights abuses is at the

heart of the issue of accountability. It ties into how do we make

fundamental change. How can you attract Catholics, Nationalists,

under represented groups, if there is a sense of impunity for past

abuses? What if Michael Finucane’s family believes that the people

who colluded in the death of his father are still in the police service? Yet at the same time, people are being left in the new police

service who we know have been involved in very, very serious

human rights abuses.

Mr. SMITH. On Emergency Powers—go ahead.

Ms. BEIRNE. A couple of other points. Thus on plastic bullets and

the extent they have been solely used as a response to petrol

bombs—as Jane said concerning the actual incidence of people having been killed by plastic bullets: very few of them were involved

in riotous behavior and very few were involved in petrol bombing.

This year we were in correspondence with the Chief Constable

about the firing of plastic bullets in the Drumcree area when there

were absolutely no petrol bombs being thrown. There was minor rioting by young children. Plastic bullets were being fired, with

young children in the immediate area, and they were ricocheting

off garden walls. So I question the offered statistic that was mentioned, and that they have only been used in cases where the security force is under serious attack.

Mr. Payne’s point about the Land Rovers and the general militarism of the police force. Patten has addressed it in part. The report refers to the total inappropriateness of RUC buildings their accessibility and the fact that they are like military installations. The

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gency Powers—Emergency Powers, around the world, lend themselves to abuse of human rights.

We feel that unless the issue of police powers is tackled, there

is a very serious risk that whatever changes are made to policing,

it is not going to change fundamentally. Patten has obviously not

convinced us and we have not convinced him, so we have to convince government in the forthcoming consultation process. In the

criminal justice review that is taking place, we will push (and we

would hope that the Subcommittee would push) to ensure that

Emergency Powers is on the agenda and that is addressed very directly.

As I said, Patten devoted two paragraphs to this question. There

is absolutely no attempt to justify their stance. With plastic bullets

there is at least some suggestion that they have considered other

options, but Emergency Powers, are taken as a given. Yet if you

don’t tackle these abusive powers, you are left with very little

change fundamentally in policing.

Mr. SMITH. I too was struck by how briefly they dealt with emergency powers. As I said in my opening, they recommend that the

law in the North of Ireland should be the same as that in the rest

of the U.K., and then they go on to completely undo that. Does this

record keeping that they recommend amount to anything to you?

If someone is committing abuse, they are not going to write it up.

Ms. BEIRNE. At the moment we are very clear from anecdotal evidence that people in Nationalist areas are more likely to be subject

to the stop-and-search procedures, but we have no hard data to

measure that. So hard data would be an improvement. Obviously

also it is an improvement that we get rid of Castlereagh and the

holding centers which the United Nations and other bodies have

been pushing for some time.

But Patten didn’t follow through the logic of his commitment to

the assertion that policing should be based on the fundamental protection of human rights. That is what policing is about. Yet here

at the heart of this are these Emergency Powers which all international experience says is not going to work. You can arrest people and deny their access to their solicitors and it is not surprising

that ill treatment occurs. We have seen in the past.

Mr. SMITH. One final question that Mr. Gilman asked. Is there

a civil right to be a policeman, as Mr. Patten suggested, so it is inappropriate to exclude members of the Orange Order from the police force? Basically if you belong to an Orange Order, should that

preclude you from being a member of the police?

Ms. WINTER. In our submission to the Patten Commission, we argued that membership of any organization which discriminated

against a certain section of society would be inappropriate for a police officer who must take an oath to serve the whole of the community without fear or favor.

The Orange Order is clearly problematic in this respect. Therefore we felt that it would be incompatible to be a member of the

Orange Order, and I understand that the chief constable himself

has expressed reservations about that. So merely having a register

of interests is not enough and we would like to see a situation

where any police service, particularly the new Northern Ireland PoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:14 Feb 12, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\64523 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
53

lice Service, is sensitive to the incompatibility of membership of

certain groups with being an impartial police officer.

Ms. BEIRNE. One thing to add there. One of the building blocks

in Patten’s report is the new oath that new and existing officers

are to take—i.e. a commitment to uphold human rights of everyone

within society. Yet one must at least question whether, given the

oath that members of the Orange Order have to take, they can simultaneously take an oath to protect equally the traditions of the

whole community. It is interesting that there wasn’t an engagement in the report with that potential contradiction. Indeed, quite

the reverse, given that the key argument given in the report for allowing members of the Orange Order was the fact that to deny

them would be to deny access to a very large proportion of the population. But, in fact, that doesn’t seem an overly convincing argument. As I said there was no discussions as to whether the Patten

Commission itself saw any contradiction between these two oaths,

the oath to the orange and the oath to uphold equally the traditions of everyone within the community.

Mr. SMITH. Would it be possible for you to get us a copy of that

oath for it to be included in the record?

Ms. BEIRNE. Yes.

Mr. SMITH. Again, I want to thank you for your excellent testimony. We will continue to work with you and we are greatly benefited by your insights, your counsel, your wisdom and your courage.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

(55)

A P P E N D I X

SEPTEMBER 24, 1999

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