The Smithwick Tribunal descends into pure farce
RUC officers Breen and Buchanan assassinated in 1989
With an initial deadline of November 2011, the Irish government has given the Smithwick Tribunal yet another extension to its report deadline, which has now been set as July 2013. The reasons for this deadline extension represent an effective change in the Tribunal’s initial remit. In other words, it is not now primarily investigating the police officers it was originally asked to investigate, and it is, to my mind, surprising that no journalist or media outlet has questioned this startling volte-face.
Ireland PLC is more or less bankrupt and yet here we are throwing more millions at a legal inquiry that is based on the highly dubious “testimony” of two low level spooks in the Force Research Unit. A self standing unit within the British Army whose raison d’etre was collusion and murder.
To my knowledge, no one in that same Irish media has asked how it can be that the words of serial disinformation experts Peter Keeley and Ian Hurst (a.k.a. as Kevin Fulton and Martin Ingram respectively) can form the basis of a multi million Euro statutory inquiry. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has already completely demolished Ian Hurst’s credibility and Peter Keeley is well known for inventing stories about politicians and posing as a Real IRA man.
The reason for this new deadline extension is that the PSNI has announced the sudden discovery of new information, which apparently says next to nothing about the gardaí who were originally accused of helping the IRA, but points at a different group altogether.
So now the job of the Smithwick Tribunal has become nothing short of a desperate search to find a “guard”, any guard, who can match the relevant crime and therefore justify its continued existence. The opposite in other words of normal legal inquiry.
@Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair,
Mí Deireadh Fómhair, 2012