2 June 1999 Update
At noon today the judge retired to consider his decision in the judicial review by the family of murdered Belfast teenager Peter Mc Bride against the British Ministry of Defence (MOD). The review followed the controversial decision by an Army Board to allow two Scots Guards, Mark Wright and James Fisher, to rejoin their regiment despite having been convicted of the murder of 18 year old Peter Mc Bride in 1992. The two served just six years of their life sentences before being granted early release, outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. In November 1998 an Army Board which included Doug Henderson MP, the Armed Forces Minister, decided that ‘exceptional reasons’ existed under Queens Regulations justifying retention of the two in the British Army. These so called ‘exceptional reasons’ were challenged by lawyers for the Mc Bride family in the two day hearing at Belfast High Court before Justice Kerr.
The MOD was represented by Ian Burnett QC, who is also senior barrister for the British Army in the Bloody Sunday Tribunal. He essentially put forward two linked arguments on behalf of the MOD; that the applicant, Jean Mc Bride, did not have ‘sufficient interest’ in legal terms to intervene in the decision and, secondly, that the decision was a private law matter and therefore not subject to judicial review. It was striking that the MOD put forward no substantial arguments to justify the actual decision to retain the two but instead focused on arguing that no one else, not even the mother of the murder victim, had a right to intervene. Where the MOD did touch on the six reasons originally provided to the Pat Finucane Centre justifying their decision it became obvious that their legal team were unable to put forward arguments likely to convince the court.
The senior barrister for the Mc Bride family, Michael Lavery Q.C., was devastating in his criticism of the mentality that suggested that the murder of an innocent Irish civilian was somehow of no consequence to the MOD. During the review it became clear that documents supplied to the Army Board were seriously flawed and contradicted the judgement at the original trial. The MOD legal team attempted to minimise this aspect of the case. It is important to remember what is at stake in this judicial review. A young man was murdered on September 4 1992. Two British soldiers were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. They were released after six years and were allowed to continue their army careers. The decision to allow them to do so was made by senior army officers, a civil servant and a government minister who collectively rejected the judgement of the court. They did so because the victim was Irish, Catholic and working class while the perpetrators were British soldiers. It is a sad reflection on that same state when taxpayers money is used to finance a legal defence based, not on the reasons offered by the Army Board, but on legalistic interpretations designed to further increase the suffering of the Mc Bride family.
Judgement in this unprecedented legal case is expected in the near future. When it is delivered we will provide a more extensive overview of the circumstances surrounding the review.