By Tom Griffin, 29 April 2005, Irish World
The sister of murdered Belfastman Peter McBride has dramatically backed Labour in the constituency where she stood as an independent almost two years ago.
Kelly McBride stood in the Brent East by-election in September 2003 to highlight the British Army's decision to retain two Scots Guards soldiers convicted of murdering her brother Peter in 1992.
She has now urged her supporters to vote Labour following a meeting with London Mayor Ken Livingstone and his human rights advisor Yasmin Qureshi at London's City Hall last Thursday.
Qureshi is Labour's candidate in Brent East and has pledged to raise the McBride case in Parliament and to put forward a Private Members Bill, barring those convicted of serious offences from serving in the Army.
Asked after the meeting if she had a message for her 2003 supporters, Kelly McBride said: "Come out and vote for Yasmin. She's going to come out and speak for us. She's going to try and get the law changed, so that any soldier convicted of rape, murder or whatever should be automatically put out of the Army."
"Ken and Yasmin genuinely want to help us the best they can, and we're really grateful to them, because I think Tony Blair just thinks this is going to go away, but as I said before, we are here to stay till they are out."
The High Court in Belfast ruled in June 2003 that the Army was wrong to retain Peter McBride's killers, Scots Guardsmen Mark Wright and James Fisher, after their release from prison.
The McBride family have been waiting for the past fourteen months for the result of a judicial review into the Army's decision to retain the pair in spite of the High Court ruling.
Livingstone said last week he would support the McBride family in taking the case to Europe, and would publicise the case in The Londoner, the Greater London Authority's free newspaper, which is delivered to homes across the capital.
"This is a human rights abuse on a grand scale," the London Mayor said. "We are now having a position where soldiers who have abused Iraqi prisoners, both American and British soldiers are being sent to jail, and here we have a situation where a completely innocent Irishman was shot in the back after he'd been searched, so that the soldiers shooting him in the back knew he represented no threat and he was running away."
"Anywhere else in the world we call that murder. In most American states you either get the death penalty or you never come out of prison. Here not only have these people been released after a really scurrilous campaign by the Daily Mail, which smeared the victim and the victims family, but they're serving in the army again."
"How can anyone feel confident or safe when these people have had guns put back in their hands?"
Livingstone said he believed that, if elected, Yasmin Qureshi would take up Irish human rights issues in the same way he had done when he represented Brent East.
"When I was first elected as an MP, in my maiden speech I raised the issue of the assassinations being carried out in plain clothes by British soldiers involving Captain Nairac, Airey Neave and a whole network of conspiracy. I was denounced by all the British newspapers and of course now twenty years later all of it has come out. It's all been proved true. We've had apologies from Government ministers and the Prime Minister, and this is one of those cases that still need to be resolved."
"I think Yasmin because of her human rights record will be able to take up a lot of those issues that are still unresolved between Britain and Ireland following our long occupation."
Qureshi, a human rights lawyer who has worked for the United Nations in Kosovo, pledged that she would definitely raise the McBride case in Parliament if elected.
"There is a need for the law to be changed," she said. "I think it undermines confidence in the armed services that you can have people as serving soldiers that have been convicted of serious crimes. It just doesn't make any sense."
The issue had been raised on the doorstep in Brent East, she added.
"There are some people who have expressed concerns not only about the McBride case but also about the Finucane case, and of course the Inquiries Bill."
Qureshi said she was quietly confident of taking the seat back from Liberal Democrat incumbent Sarah Teather.
"I hope that the Irish community will see that on many issues the Labour Party has delivered. Traditionally it tends to be the party, which has always looked after the interests of different groups of people." "I feel that in somebody like myself, they will have somebody who very much understands their concerns. I'm a first generation immigrant, so I think I have a lot of understanding of what it is to be part of minority group. With my work in human rights issues, I'm not afraid to speak my mind. If I think something is wrong I have no hesitation in saying its wrong, Irrespective of whether the Daily Mail are happy with it or unhappy with it."