Friday March 30, 2001
The family of murdered Belfast teenager Peter McBride were at the High Court in Belfast today for the second day of the Judicial Review hearings into the Army Board’s decision to retain the two Scots Guards convicted of his murder. The court was presided over by Lord Justice Kerr. Accompanying Jean McBride were a representative of the Irish Government, Patricia McKenna, Green Party Member of the European Parliament for Dublin, Paul O’Connor, of the Pat Finucane Centre, and representatives of other NGOs.
The proceedings were largely taken up by representations by Senior Counsel for the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Ian Burnett QC.
Over the course of the day, Mr Burnett attempted to refute the main arguments posed by Counsel for Jean McBride. He was also questioned closely by the judge as to why the second Army Board had again referred to the general security situation and the dangers posed by coffe jar bombs. This was irrelevant to the actual circumstances of the murder. Mr Burnett was also closely questioned on why the Army Authorities had refused to submit documents from Jean McBride to the Army Board.
During a break in the proceedings, documents which had been available to the Army Board were disclosed for the first time to Madden and Finucane, solicitors for Jean McBride. As a result of this and other legal matters there will be a further court hearing after Easter. Any decision is therefore still a long way off.
Some of the events of the day include:
Counsel for the Army admitted that, although the Army had claimed that the two Scots Guards had learned a "bitter and lasting lesson", that the two had shown no remorse and in fact the original judgement that they were guilty of murder. In spite of this, the Army Board had still decided to retain them.
Counsel for the Army said that a six year prison term was a "powerful deterrent" for the crime of murder.
Counsel for the Army argued that a decision not to allow the retention of the two on the grounds of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights would mean that the army could not retain soldiers it wanted if they had murder convictions.