Chapter 22 – the Derrynoose Trial 1

Chapter 22 – The Derrynoose Trial For as long as there have been wars there have been iconic images that define them. Stretching back through time to the pale golden profiles of warriors on black Attic pottery, to the naïve stitches on the Bayeux Tapestry with the dying English king holding the fateful arrow and Joe Rosenthal’s raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. Then the video age with the shocking execution of a POW by General Laon on the streets of Saigon, the awful, heart rending image of Kim Phuc, stripped of her clothes and most of her flesh, fleeing from her recently napalmed village, to the most recent computer-game images from the Gulf and the trails of twisted bodies on the Basra highway. The video reel of the killings of Corporals David Howes and Derek Tony Wood became the abiding images of the Northern Ireland conflict. On 19th March 1988 two British soldiers accidently drove into the path of the funeral of an IRA terrorist. What terrible bad luck brought them to the Andersonstown Road that afternoon can never be known but, as the newsreel captures the mob swarming over their Volkswagen Passat the viewer can only watch in silent horror. Suddenly Derek Wood looses off a single round from his pistol and the crowd flees with the suddenness of flies disturbed from a carcass. But with the same thirst for blood that brings the flies back, the crowd closes in again enveloping the car and dragging the soldiers into the street, beating and stripping them, then dragging them to waste ground where they are summarily executed. The footage lasts no more than a minute or two. Eventually the crowd, fearing that their murderous actions will be captured and used against them, turn on the cameraman and the filming stops but what was been recorded is played back that evening at the top of every news bulletin for some days to come. The film shocks all sides and somewhere, so it is alleged, it also moves certain people within the British establishment to a desire for revenge. Three weeks later the bodies of six senior members of the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA were found in a barn in a field near Derrynoose in County Armagh just inside the Northern Ireland border. The British 1 Chapter 22 – The Derrynoose Trial Army and the British Government maintained that the killings were as a result of factional in- fighting and the six dead were executed by a rival IRA members in a power struggle. The IRA vigorously denied this and claimed that the men had been captured by an SAS team south of the border, brought into the North and shot in retaliation for the Corporal killings. As with so many of the claims and counter-claims during the conflict little was made of it. There was no public appetite for an enquiry into this or any other killings of IRA suspects, as the public believed that each death only avenged another amongst British civilians or the British armed forces. It was only as the peace process began in earnest in the 1980s that some of the incidents that most incensed the Republicans began to develop into causes célèbre and chief amongst them was the Derrynoose killings. It was widely believed that a relative, possibly even a brother, of one of the Ulster politicians most prominent in the peace process had been amongst the dead and gradually it became apparent that an independent investigation was critical if the peace process was to thrive. In March 1994 John Major, the then British Prime Minister, announced to the House of Commons that an independent enquiry into the Derrynoose killings was to be set up led by a senior High Court Judge. It was no doubt hoped that the mere announcement of the enquiry would be sufficient to appease the Republicans and in a sense it did. The peace process progressed and in October of that year all the major Para-military organisations declared a cease- fire. Unfortunately for the British government their handpicked High Court Judge turned out not to be the stooge they had hoped. The enquiry continued through 1994 and into 1995 calling witnesses from both sides whose tongues had been loosened in the new atmosphere of entente. There was a force about the process of justice that just could not be stopped and when the findings were announced in late 1995 the results were so sensational that there was no kind of news day in which they could be buried. The unequivocal conclusion was that a mass murder had 2 Chapter 22 – The Derrynoose Trial taken place in the barn in South Armagh and that the perpetrators of the crime were indisputably British soldiers, almost certainly members of the Special Air Service. Although the story rumbled on for a few weeks the news circus moved on. 1996 was the year in which the Thatcher Reich, which appeared to have lasted for a thousand years, was finally beginning to crumble. The kind of sleaze, upon smut, upon rotten corruption that accompanies the demise of most great empires was devouring the Conservative party and Britain, whilst raking over the Tabloid entrails of the Conservative implosion with prurient fascination, was more than ever ready for change. The news hounds forgot Derrynoose but, in the way of all injustices, those most closely involved did not. A small group of devoted campaigners for justice remained. Composed almost entirely of mourning parents, they harried and cajoled and hassled for a trial. There were names in the report that had not been made public and these names, so the campaigners believed were the names of the soldiers who had shot dead their relatives. After the Labour landslide in 1997 they saw what the thought was their best opportunity. The Derrynoose killings had taken place on Thatcher’s watch and a trial of the soldiers responsible would make a perfect piece of symbolism for the slaying of the Thatcher dragon by cool New Labour. They were right, after a fashion, but they were still several years from any kind of justice. Twelve years in fact but eventually, in late 2008, that it was announced that a prosecution was to be brought against one of the soldiers, a Sergeant (now retired) Geoff ‘Buster’ Wilkins. Part of the great delay had been the enormous task the Director of Public Prosecutions had in deciding not only whether a trial would be in the public interest but whether, after the passage of twenty years and with so much Press, there could be a fair trial. Of the four SAS soldiers who had been implicated in the Enquiry report, two were dead, insufficient evidence could be gathered on the third but they believed with the fourth, Sergeant Wilkins, they stood a fair chance of achieving a conviction. 3 Chapter 22 – The Derrynoose Trial The trial was to take place on May 5th 2009 and it was the week before that Dorrell learned that he would be presiding. When he learned of the appointment he had mixed feelings, he didn’t deny that he always enjoyed being involved high profile in trials, he was not vain particularly but he was always pleased by the notoriety that such trials gave him. However, he was also aware that there was every likelihood that this trial would become bogged down in a morass of procedure with claim and counter-claim on matters of the trial’s legality destined to occupy more of the court’s time than any investigation of the facts or any attempt at uncovering the truth. No Judge would especially relish this. As it happened, however, far from achieving notoriety he would achieve oblivion and far from the trial becoming a procedural marathon, there would, in fact, be no trial at all. Two days before the start of the trial Dorrell received a visitor in his rooms at the Old Bailey. He had been announced by his secretary who had told that there was a gentleman waiting to see him on an urgent matter relating to the case of R v Wilkins. Ordinarily Dorrell would accept visits unless they had been prearranged, but the gentleman had been rather insistent, so his secretary told him, and had therefore agreed. When the man entered Dorrell had lit a cigarette and was making the pretence of studying some papers on his desk, he motioned to the man to take a seat in front of his desk. Dorrell was childishly amused by his habit of always appearing to be busy whenever anyone entered the room, he liked to think that it added to his sense of superiority; it would never do for visitors to believe they had the upper hand in some way. After a few moments and a deliberately long drag on his cigarette, he placed the top back on his pen, sat back in his chair and asked how he could help. ‘My name is Alex Chatham your Honour, I work for MI5.’ 4 Chapter 22 – The Derrynoose Trial Dorrell frowned. He had been half expecting a visit of this nature, the trial if Buster Wilkins was freighted with political implications both above and below the waterline. It was not at all surprising that he should be hearing from the Intelligence services and would, of course, not be the first time that third parties had attempted to influence the outcome of a trial that they did not wish to see proceed. It was a wonder, he thought, that no one had ever studied his record on such matters.

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