Britain - Blair apologises for false IRA jailings

[Menydh]

Blair apologises for false IRA jailings

Reuters
February 9, 2005

LONDON (Reuters) - Three decades after wrongly jailing 11 people for IRA bombs at English pubs, the government has apologised to the victims of one of Britain's most notorious miscarriages of justice.

Four of them -- the so-called "Guildford Four" -- achieved international fame when their wrongful 15-year jailing was dramatised in the 1993 film "In The Name Of The Father."

Prime Minister Tony Blair met some of the former prisoners in London on Wednesday to offer a personal mea culpa on behalf of the state.

"I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and such an injustice," he said in a brief television statement.

"They deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated."

The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were blamed for 1974 bombs in bars in the southern towns of Guildford and Woolwich.

Appeal courts overturned the convictions of the four in 1989, and the seven in 1991, amid allegations of falsified evidence and confessions obtained under coercion.

The bombs came at the height of the Irish Republican Army's attacks on mainland Britain as part of its fight to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic to the south.

Gerry Conlon -- the best-known of the Guildford Four, whose father died in custody -- told reporters in London the lack of a top-level apology until Wednesday had worsened their suffering.

Conlon thanked Blair, but expressed bitterness at the 11's ordeal and appealed for similar closure in other cases.

"THE START OF THE END"

"It's a Who's Who of victims of miscarriages of justice," he said. "There's so many to name. The obvious ones are the Birmingham Six, the Tottenham Three, the Cardiff Three, the Bridgwater Four ... it goes on and it goes on," he said, referring to some other famous IRA and race cases.

He said Blair had promised medical help.

"We know how damaged we are because we lived the 15 years in jail ... We live, breath, smell, taste it. So many things come back to haunt you. I need this erased," he said.

"Tony Blair met us privately, he spoke to every one of us, he took time, he listened to us, he exceeded our expectations in apologising ... Today is the start of the end."

Conlon said Wednesday's apology was a vindication for his father, one of the seven, whom he last saw on an oxygen mask and drips in 1980.

"He said to me: 'I'm dying but I need to die to break this case, to get you out. When you get out, get my name cleared.'"

Blair, who has made a lasting political pact in Northern Ireland one of the priorities of his premiership since 1997, campaigned as a young parliamentarian for the release of the Guildford Four.

He said he understood the suffering and stigma they had endured. "Their loss, the loss suffered by their families, will never go away ... It serves no one for the wrong people to be convicted for such an awful crime."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Dublin had been instrumental in persuading Blair to take action.

"My hope for them (the Conlons) today is that they and the Maguires can move on with their lives and that the cloud that has hung over them for so long will now finally lift," he said.

On ceasefire since the 1990s, the Catholic IRA fought a violent, three-decade war with British security forces in a conflict that cost some 3,600 lives.


[source]

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

the Catholic IRA

Yeah, right