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Failure to disclose information relating to paramilitary killings branded sickening

JUSTICE campaigners branded the police failure to disclose information on a 1992 loyalist paramilitary attack in which five people were killed “sickening” today amid accusations of collusion and cover-up.

Police Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire found “significant information” relating to the slaying of five victims in an attack on the Sean Graham’s bookmakers shop in Belfast by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) had been withheld, and ordered an inquiry.

Nobody has been brought to justice for the shootings with the families of the victims, believing there was collusion between state security services and the UFF.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) claimed it did not deliberately fail to disclose the information blaming human error and an archaic computer system unable to cope with the “sheer volume of the material involved.”

Dr Maguire said: “It would seem information which police told us did not exist has now been found,” after a researcher made the discovery of the material.

The findings have led to new lines of investigation into events connected to loyalist paramilitaries in the north-west of the occupied six counties between 1988 and 1994 and the murder of teenager Damien Walsh at a coal depot in west Belfast in 1993.

Tommy Duffin, whose father Jack was killed in the Sean Graham shootings, branded the news an “absolute disgrace,” saying that all the families have got is “knockback after knockback.”

Survivor Mark Sykes said he felt “sick, angry and lied to.”

“We had been told time and time again when we met Mr Maguire that he had all the information that he needed to do this report. To be told yesterday that there were documents withheld from him was sickening.”

It is the latest setback for those campaigning for justice for victims of those killed in the Troubles. 

Earlier this week families of those killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in May 1974 were left angered after the disclosure of information relating to the case was blocked following an appeal by lawyers on behalf of the state, who are accused of collusion with the bombers. 

An inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre, in which 10 unarmed civilians were shot dead by British soldiers, has been hindered by missing or lost information and delays due to the denial of funding by the Democratic Unionist Party.

Pat Finucane Centre spokesman Paul O’Connor demanded “a rigorous and independent investigation with no stone unturned.”

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