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Truth Inquiry for the New Lodge Six November 25, 2002 | Andersonstown News
International lawyers took part in an inquiry into the death of Jim Sloan, Jim McCann, Tony Campbell,
Brendan Maguire, John Loughran and Ambrose Hardy.
“People in the New Lodge will go on searching for the truth despite
systematically been told lies for 30 years,” according to Paul O’Neill of
the New Lodge Six Time for Truth Committee.
The two-day Community Inquiry into the murders of the New Lodge 6 inquiry
came to an end on Saturday as more than 30 witnesses, family and friends of
the six men told of the horror of the night British soldiers opened fire
from observation posts directly after gunmen in a passing car shot dead two
unarmed IRA men outside Lynch’s bar.
The army shootings of the other four men and the heartache, which has
endured for their loved ones was also told for the first time in public.
Witness after witness told through the two days of the hearings how no one
had ever been approached by the RUC and asked to give statements abut the
events of that night.
Panellist Gareth Peirce, who has years of experience working on some the
most high-profile cases involving Irish people being held in Britain
including the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, expressed her shock that
until she had been asked to attend the hearings she had never heard of the
incidents on the night of 3 and 4 February 1973 on the New Lodge.
“Despite the fact that the casualties were half of the number of people
killed on Derry’s Bloody Sunday.”
Paul O’Neill said the shootings that occurred on the night and early hours
of February 3 and 4 1973, were part of a continuous and planned policy by
the British forces in the North of Ireland to terrorise the people of the
New Lodge throughout 30 years of the Troubles.
“From Danny O’Hagan,” he said, “the first person to be shot dead in 1970 on
the New Lodge Road to Seamus Cassidy who was shot dead in his car on the
main New lodge Road in broad daylight. They claimed he had a rifle too but
all of the people on the road that night knew this was a lie.
They lied that McGurk’s Bar was an IRA own goal but they never admitted the
truth even when a UVF man was convicted of carrying out the bombing. “They
still have never apologised to the people of this area.
They dragged wee Micky Hayes up an entry and murdered him, said he was a
gunman but we know that was a lie too.
And years later they murdered young Seamus Duffy and told lies again. We
want the truth about the New Lodge Six for their families and for the
families of all these other people murdered by the British state. And we
will have that truth for we won’t stop until we get it.”
The panel of international legal experts and human rights lawyers were
visibly moved by many of the testimonies.
In a heartbreaking scene one witness who was 16-years-old when she tried in
vain to staunch the blood of 19-year-old unarmed IRA volunteer Tony “TC”
Campbell as he lay dying at Edlingham Street, spoke for the first time about
the horrific night.
An audio tape of 88-year-old Minnie Loughran who was too ill to attend the
community inquiry, brought many to tears in North Queen Street’s St Kevin
Hall
The packed and hushed hall heard how the mother of John Loughran, who was
shot dead as he dragged the dead and dying out of the line of the gunfire
into his parlour, said she had always known the British army had been
covering up the killings.
Even the judicial system and subsequent coroners’ inquests simply accepted
the British army’s version of events, it was said.
Rosaleen Beattie told how her parents were given just £90 compensation for
the murder of her brother Ambrose Hardy.
Several of the panel commented on the extreme bravery of the people, who
went to the aid of the dying and paid the ultimate price by being shot
themselves.
Charlie Carson, who was wounded in the gunfire at Edlingham Street summed up
the feelings of many when he was asked what did he do to try to get justice:
“We had no one to go to. No one wanted to listen, no one wanted to know, we
were just bodies to those people.”
Journalist:
Andrea McKernon
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