A Belfast High Court judge has ordered Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn to set up a public inquiry into the murder of GAA official Seán Brown by loyalist paramilitaries in Co Derry in 1997.
Mr Justice Humphreys compelled the step to be taken after finding the UK government remains in breach of a human rights duty to investigate the full extent of state collusion in the killing.
Granting a judicial review challenge by the victim’s 87-year-old widow Bridie, he held there is a “clear and unambiguous obligation” to establish a statutory probe.
“No viable alternative to a public inquiry has been advanced,” the judge confirmed. “In these circumstances, there can be only one lawful answer, a public inquiry must be convened to satisfy the state’s Article 2 obligation.”
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Mr Brown (61), was abducted by a Loyalist Volunteer Force gang as he locked the gates at Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAA club in Co Derry on May 12th, 1997. The father of six was bundled into the boot of his car, taken to Randalstown, Co Antrim and shot dead.
Nobody has ever been convicted of his murder.
Earlier this year, it emerged at an inquest that state agents were among more than 25 people linked by intelligence services to the killing.
At that stage the coroner, Mr Justice Kinney, halted proceedings due to the extent of confidential material excluded or withheld on national security grounds. He wrote to the previous Conservative-led government requesting the establishment of a public inquiry.
In September, Mr Benn confirmed that those calls had been rejected. He instead recommended that the bereaved family should engage with the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), a new body set up under the controversial Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy Act.
The Court of Appeal has already ruled that parts of the legislation breaches human rights law, with the government having too much power to prohibit the commission from sharing sensitive information.
Even though the current UK government has pledged to repeal the Act, it intends to retain the ICRIR.
According to Mrs Brown, the decision to deny her a public inquiry into her husband’s murder breached Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Her lawyers argued that it is the only plausible way to expose the full truth of state involvement and the level of protection given to the killers.
Barrister Desmond Fahy KC accepted that the chances of anyone ever being convicted for the killing are “vanishingly small”. But even though they may have escaped accountability, he insisted the reasons must still be examined.
The widow and members of her family were accompanied by supporters, political representatives and GAA president Jarlath Burns for their legal challenge.
In an affidavit read out in court, Mrs Brown described going to the Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAA club grounds with a torchlight to search in vain for her husband on the night he failed to return home. She also recalled police officers attending the family’s house hours later, and her shock when one of them asked why her daughter was crying.
It was claimed that her experiences on the morning after her husband’s murder were emblematic of the lack of compassion and general disregard shown to her and the Brown family by state bodies in the intervening 27 years.
The court heard revelations that state agents were connected to the killing came as a “shock of seismic proportions” to the family.
The judge was told how a number of reports have already been heavily critical of the police inquiry into the murder.
In 2022, the PSNI issued a public apology to Mrs Brown for deficiencies in the original inquiry as part of a settlement reached in a separate civil action over claims her husband’s killers were protected.
Speaking after accompanying the family in court, GAA president Jarlath Burns said that the “perseverance of the Brown family over a 27-year period is an example to us all”.
“They have endured a torturous process but have never wavered in their conviction to find out who was behind the events that led to Seán’s brutal murder that night after locking up their GAA Club in South Derry,” he said in a statement from the GAA.
“The GAA stands fully behind the family’s ongoing efforts to establish the truth and seek justice in Seán’s memory.”
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