Below is a short post on the back of a conversation on Twitter between myself, @EdSimpsonNI and @yeronlyman. Sometimes the 140 characters are just not enough. It began with a tweet regarding an interview I gave to the North Belfast News (I have included the link to the piece which was not included [...]

This features in an article by Gemma Burns of the North Belfast News 18th August 2011. I will link the full article when it is online. It regards the “leak” of the Criminal Justice Inspection report into the “independence” of the office of Police Ombudsman and the influence of those it investigates. Only in a Kafka novel or Northern [...]

Below is a press release by Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin MLA for North Belfast. He is party spokesman for Policing and Justice. He sits on the Policing Board which holds the police accountable – unlike the Police Ombudsman’s office it seems.

Commenting after leaks of the Criminal Justice Inspectorate Report into the operation of the [...]

Below is a posting from I first made in July 2010 with relevant news pieces when the Police Ombudsman aborted his first so-called investigatory report into the McGurk’s Bar Massacre.

I re-published it today with the release of an historic article by Barry McCaffrey (The Detail and Irish News) regarding an independent review by the Criminal Justice Inspectorate which says [...]

My name is Ciarán MacAirt.

I am a grandson of John and Kathleen Irvine. Kitty, as her friends and family called her, was one of fifteen innocent civilians, women, men and children, who were slain in the McGurk’s Bar Massacre, 4th December 1971. Over a dozen injured were lucky to escape with their lives. It [...]

Belfast Féile and the Ballymurphy Campaigners have given me a great honour: they have kindly asked me to attend and present at an event that they have organized tomorrow: Shared Experience and Dealing With the Past.

Also represented with be the families of those killed in the Shankill Bombing and the New Lodge 6. Victims’ groups, VAST and WAVE [...]

Whilst researching the McGurk’s Bar Massacre within British Governmental and military archives, I discovered secret documents that give a startling insight into how the British élite actually viewed the worsening situation in Northern Ireland in late 1971.

Document 1: Central Policy Review Staff (30th September 1971)

Sourced from the National Archives, Kew

Shocking [...]

As with every July before it, this July has descended into dispute, counter-protest, violence and thuggery. In the eye of this yearly maelstrom is the Orange Order and their “right” to parade.

Rioting, destruction to property and near-death aside, this year has been particularly portentous. Politicians – of all shades - have scrambled over each other to pacify paramilitaries in East [...]

This week the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), a leading independent, Human Rights group, published a review of the office of the Police Ombudsman Northern Ireland (PONI).

Once more, we are presented with a searing indictment of Mr. Al Hutchinson’s management of this crucial statutory body.

The CAJ report was initiated [...]

On Saturday past (11th June) the families met to mull over artefacts we have for exhibition and plans to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre on 4th December 2011.

Everything was brought to the table: hand-carved Celtic crosses, opinions, much-loved photographs, old newspaper clippings, concepts and, of course, many, many now-not-so-secret archives. [...]