The report, Bitter Legacy: State Impunity in the Northern Ireland Conflict, concludes that British security forces were essentially exempt from prosecution for crimes committed during the Troubles, which include murder, torture, and mistreatment. Prepared by a group of international experts assembled by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, the report was published on the eve of the UK government’s contentious Legacy Act coming into effect.
The report’s authors express fears that the Legacy Act allows for a damaging precedent, enabling global despotic regimes to validate and justify their own policies of impunity. The report exclusively addresses crimes executed by British security forces during the Troubles and excludes those carried out by republican and loyalist paramilitaries, which were responsible for 90% of fatalities during the conflict.
During the Troubles, 30,000 paramilitaries were incarcerated while a minuscule number of military personnel or police who perpetrated crimes were convicted. This discrepancy is the crux of the report, as explained by Gisle Kvanvig of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights. Kvanvig emphasises that as upholders of the law, higher standards ought to be expected from state actors.
The report’s authors recommend repealing the Legacy Act in favour of reinstating the Stormont House Agreement of 2014 that facilitated the formation of the Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) and the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR). The Legacy Act would halt all ongoing probes into killings related to the Troubles, including inquiries, legal appeals and criminal trials. In place of these, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) would be established, a move that critics criticise as an insufficient measure to address past crimes. As of May 1st, all remaining 500 claims against the British military will be dismissed.
The report finds that the investigation of state-sanctioned killings followed a complacent “tea and sandwiches” approach. Frequently, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) would transfer responsibility to the Royal Military Police (RMP), although the latter made no efforts to probe these killings. A key finding of the report is that the belief that only a few individuals in the security forces involved in criminal cover-ups or collaborations with paramilitaries were rogue players is misguided. Instead, the report asserts that such state impunity was “extensive, systematic and systemic”.
A panel of experts, chaired by Kjell Erik Eriksen, a former detective from Norway, conducted comprehensive evaluations into 54 cases of confirmed or alleged state-involved murders. The panel identified a pattern of neglect or substandard conduct of critical investigation processes in the cases from post-1974 through the 1980s. Essential investigative actions were often overlooked.
While there was some degree of investigation into cases from the 1990s, Eriksen noted the investigations between 1970 and 1973 as neither competent nor effective. Fundamental procedures such as setting up police cordons, capturing crime scene images, and collecting witness accounts were frequently executed in a cursory way. Interviews with suspects were typically short and of substandard quality.
Maria Jose Guembe, a human rights attorney from Argentina, pointed out that the UK had repeatedly violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This mandate orders states to undertake thorough investigations of murders.