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Spycops Infiltrated Bloody Sunday March Organisers printable version

18 Jun 2018: posted by the editor - Human Rights, United Kingdom, Northern Ireland

Report by campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
There are renewed calls for a Northern Ireland Inquiry after it has been revealed that an undercover officer from a disgraced political policing unit infiltrated Northern Irish civil rights groups, including the Bloody Sunday march organisers.

The revelation came on Thursday 14 June from the Undercover Policing Inquiry, which is examining the 'spycops' units that targeted political campaigns for 50 years from 1968.

Under the name 'Sean Lynch', the Metropolitan Police's Special Demonstration Squad undercover officer infiltrated several organisations from 1968-74. These included the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign and Sinn Féin (London). NICRA was the organiser of the Bloody Sunday march in 1972 when the British army shot dead 14 unarmed demonstrators.

Though mostly Metropolitan Police officers, some travelled throughout the UK and beyond. The public inquiry attracted criticism in 2015 when then-Home Secretary Theresa May limited it to events in England & Wales.

Former Northern Irish justice ministers Claire Sugden and David Ford have both backed the call to extend it to the whole UK, but to no avail. This week's shock announcement may change that.

The fact of the SDS' involvement in NICRA was not revealed to the Saville Inquiry of 2000-2010 that was supposed to fully examine Bloody Sunday. This mirrors the SDS' spying on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence but failing to tell the subsequent Macpherson Inquiry.

Officers have already been known to spy beyond the borders of England and Wales, but the fresh information about 'Sean Lynch', who is now deceased, shows the Met unit had an involved interest in the politics of Northern Ireland.

The Home Office has rebuffed repeated requests from the Scottish Government for Scotland to be included in the Inquiry. In March, Amnesty called for it to extend to Northern Ireland. At that time only one spycops officer, Mark Jenner, was known to have been involved in Irish politics.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland say local forces were 'completely blind' to the SDS officers' presence, and do not appear to have been given any information for use afterwards. PSNI's Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said deploying undercover officers without local forces' risk assessments would be 'an act of madness'.

Environmental activist Jason Kirkpatrick has been granted core participant status at the Undercover Policing Inquiry due to being spied on by officer Mark Kennedy - in Northern Ireland as well as England.

In 2005 Kennedy took Kirkpatrick and fellow campaigner Kim Bryan on a speaking tour in Northern Ireland, with the officer paying the bills and driving them around. They held public events at Belfast City Church as well as a public "Environmental Pub Quiz" at Menagerie Bar in the Belfast Holy Lands.

Kirkpatrick has launched a judicial review of the decision to exclude Northern Ireland from the Inquiry. He feels his 16 month wait for the case to come to court is extreme, and this week's announcement adds great weight to his case.

"With these fresh revelations, it is clear that an arbitrarily limited inquiry that fails to take account of operations by their undercover police in Northern Ireland is nothing short of a whitewash," he explained. "The wait caused by Home Office delays to my current Northern Irish Judicial Review case is becoming absolutely unbearable."

Kim Bryan said there can be no excuse for keeping the details hidden any longer.

"Discovering the spycops infiltrated civil rights campaigns changes everything. Bloody Sunday was a pivotal event and yet the Met hid their involvement from the Inquiry. This might be the tip of the iceberg," she said. "The truth is long overdue. The Undercover Policing Inquiry must be extended to Northern Ireland".

The Undercover Policing Inquiry was announced in 2014 after four years of revelations about Britain's undercover political police culminated in the discovery that they had spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence. Around 150 officers were deployed into a broad range of groups; peace campaigns, anti-racists, trade unions, the far left, the far right, environmentalists, animal rights and others.

Officers lived for years at a time as activists; many were arrested and went to court under their fake identities. Many stole the identities of dead children to create a basis for their false identity. Perhaps most shockingly, the majority of profiled officers exposed so far had sexual relationships with women they spied on. These were often long-term, cohabiting, relationships that integrated them into families and planned lifetimes together.

Four years since it was announced, the inquiry has yet to formally begin. It has what it describes as an 'ambitious' taerget of finishing in December 2023.

'Inquiry into undercover police actions in Northern Ireland moves step closer'
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/inquiry-into-undercover-police-actions-in-northern-ireland-moves-step-closer-35430921.html

1 -Undercover Policing Inquiry, 'Cover name released: "Sean Lynch" (dec'd)', 7 June 2018
https://twitter.com/ucpinquiry/status/1004664649407717376
2 -Undercover Policing Inquiry, Terms of Reference, 16 July 2015
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Terms-of-Reference.pdf
3 -BBC News, 'Pitchford Inquiry: Claire Sugden wants undercover police investigation extended to NI', 3 August 2016
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-36966637
4 -Alliance Party, 'Ford calls for wider undercover policing inquiry', 1 March 2018
https://allianceparty.org/article/2018/0011594/ford-calls-for-wider-undercover-policing-inquiry
5 -The Guardian, 'Police 'smear' campaign targeted Stephen Lawrence's friends and family', 24 June 2013
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/23/stephen-lawrence-undercover-police-smears
6 -Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, 'The Pitchford Inquiry's Geographical Blinkers', 30 October 2015
http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/10/30/the-pitchford-inquirys-geographical-blinkers/
7 -Scottish Government justice minister, 'Ministerial Statement: A Strategic Review of Undercover Policing', 7 February 2018
https://news.gov.scot/speeches-and-briefings/ministerial-statement-a-strategic-review-of-undercover-policing
8 -Amnesty, 'Undercover policing inquiry must be extended to Northern Ireland, say Amnesty', 1 March 2018
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/undercover-policing-inquiry-must-be-extended-northern-ireland-say-amnesty
9 -Undercover Research Group, Mark Jenner: Irish Republican Interest
http://powerbase.info/index.php/Mark_Jenner#Irish_Republican_interest
10 -BBC News, 'PSNI 'blind' to undercover Metropolitan Police officers operating in NI', 10 June 2016
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-36494895
11 -BBC News, 'Undercover officer Mark Kennedy 'monitored NI groups'', 22 December 2015
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35156850
12 - Belfast Telegraph, 'Inquiry into undercover police actions in Northern Ireland moves step closer', 7 February 2017~
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/inquiry-into-undercover-police-actions-in-northern-ireland-moves-step-closer-35430921.html

Tags: undercover police inquiry, spycops

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