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N. Ireland police accusedof colluding in 10 slayings

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 23, 2007

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Police intelligence officers covered up at least 10 killings and other crimes committed by Protestant outlaws in the 1990s who were on the payroll as informants, an investigator said Monday.

After a 3 1/2-year investigation, police ombudsman Nuala O'Loan concluded that former officers in the Special Branch paid informants in the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force who were permitted to pursue killings, bombings, drug dealing and extortion.

Her report called for police to reopen dozens of cases from the 1990s and investigate ex-officers involved in coverups of their informants' crimes.

But O'Loan conceded that British state prosecutors were unlikely to try any of the retired agents because they had deliberately failed to keep - or kept but later destroyed - documentary evidence on their informers.

The commander of the predominantly Protestant police force, Chief Constable Hugh Orde, and O'Loan noted that the police force's intelligence-gathering arm had been overhauled since 2003.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, whose Irish Republican Army-linked party was frequently targeted by Protestant paramilitary groups, said Special Branch had orchestrated or helped to cover up hundreds of other killings by anti-Catholic extremists since the conflict over Northern Ireland erupted in 1969. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

[Last modified January 23, 2007, 01:32:53]