Socialist Action /November 1999
Irish Journalist Wins Appeal Against Police Order
By GERRY FOLEY
In the last week of October, Irish journalist Ed Maloney won his appeal
to a Northern Ireland High Court against a police order to turn over the
notes of his interviews with police informant William Stobie.
Stobie had revealed that he told the Royal Irish Constabulary that he
had known about plans to assassinate nationalist lawyer Pat Finucane in
February 1989 and that they had allowed the murder to go ahead. Once this
story was reported the police charged Stobie himself with the killing and
demanded, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, that Maloney hand over
his notes.
The journalist protested that the police were trying to destroy him as
a journalist because if he broke his pledge of confidentiality to his sources,
he would no longer be trusted and thus would be unable to do his job. On
the other hand, if he refused and the order was upheld, he faced jail and
ruinous fines.
The case drew interest among journalists and defenders of human rights
because the police order was an obvious attack on journalistic investigation
of police collusion with pro-imperialist death squads.
Maloney had argued that the police themselves had interrogated Stobie
at the time of the Finucane murder, and had gotten the same story as he,
and therefore had no need of his notes. The police refused to hand over
the notes of their interrogation.
But finally Scopie's lawyers were able to get the court to hand over
the notes of his interrogation, arguing that the prosecutor had concealed
evidence, and that the notes would show that Stobie had informed the police
of the impending killing and they had done nothing.
On this basis, the court could hardly refuse the petition of the defense.
The notes were handed over and they proved Maloney's contention. On Oct.
6, the journalist informed his supporters:
"The result was a triumph. One hundred and twenty-two pages of notes
were handed over to the judge, covering 47 hours of interviews, while Stobie's
barrister put on the record the salient points-that he gave the RUC exactly
the same account as he gave me, that he was a Special Branch [political
police] agent, that he had named names (although these were blacked out
in the copy given to defense) and that at no stage did his RUC interrogators
challenge his claims about informing the Special Branch before Finucane's
murder.
"In fact at one stage Stobie complained to his interrogators that
the Special Branch had done nothing to prevent Finucane's murder and they
replied that they couldn't have done anything because he hadn't told his
Special Branch handlers the name of the target, only that the UDA [Ulster
Defense Association] were going for a top Provo.
"This was exactly what he had told me; it was a clear admission
by the RUC that Stobie had indeed informed the Special Branch [SB] of the
UDA's plans as he had told me. (In reality, the SB had enough info about
who was involved to put everyone under surveillance and thus learn the target;
either that or they were quite happy to allow the UDA to kill "top
Provos" all over the place.) In other words, Stobie has been telling
the truth."
After the police were left exposed in this way, it would have been very
difficult for the court to uphold the order against Maloney, and it did
not. The court's quashing of the order is a major victory for freedom of
the press and the right of public surveillance of the repressive forces
in the United Kingdom.
The revelation of these records is also convincing evidence of RUC collusion
with political death squads. It should be harder now for the British authorities
to prevent the truth from coming out about the dirty war they have waged
against the Catholic and nationalist community in Northern Ireland for more
than 30 years.
Socialist Action /November 1999 |