Image: A UVF mural on the Shankill Road in west Belfast (Wiki Commons)
A lawyer has told a Belfast coroner’s court that the British state was in involved in “mass murder” of 80 people in Northern Ireland.
Leslie Thomas QC told the court that the British security forces colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries in 80 deaths between 1972 and 1978 in Northern Ireland’s “murder triangle” of Armagh and Tyrone, the Belfast Telegraph reports.
Speaking at a preliminary hearing of two inquests regarding UVF bombing in Keady, Armagh in 1976 – two Catholics, Elizabeth McDonald, 38, and Gerard McGleenan, 22, died in the attack on the Step Inn. There was no warning given before the attack.
Twenty five people were also injured.
Mr Thomas said the inquests could take a year. He compared it to the inquest into the Hillsborough disaster.
"If what we say is right this is the biggest involvement of state agents in mass murder on British soil," he told the court.
"We say that what the families of the bereaved want, quite simply can be put in a few words: they want the truth, they want the truth to come out, they want justice," he added.
Mr Thomas said that the killers in this case had used the same weapons and methods as used in a number of other cases carried out by the group known as the “Glenanne Gang”. The group operated in Armagh and Tyrone in the 1970s.
"The murder of Betty McDonald could have been avoided,” Mr Thomas said.
“(It)could have been avoided had that individual been taken off the street earlier on or the weapons been taken off the street earlier on, or there had not been the collusion amongst state agents in covering up earlier murders then in terms of Betty McDonald's right to life we say she may be still here today, living long into life with her husband."
"This is the biggest case of state collusion in mass murder of innocent individuals,” Mr Thomas said.
“This is a state murdering its own, you cannot get bigger than that, and therefore while one sees and understands and looks at what is happening in Hillsborough, if what we say has occurred on, let’s face it, British soil, why should that not be investigated?
"British security agents being involved in deaths of British citizens, it does not get worse than that."
