Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The last time I spoke on this, I invited the Minister and Department officials to have a serious look at the Operation Greenwich report and I referred to the shocking case of "Person K". Person K was clearly a mass murderer. He was a key suspect in 17 murders and seven attempted murders. The report of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland states that in 2016 the senior investigating officer for Operation Greenwich passed on a file about Person K to the PSNI. Six years on, we are not aware of where that investigation sits. This is a person who literally had a licence to kill, including the murder of Sinn Féin councillor, Eddie Fullerton, in Donegal.

Today, I want to talk about "Person J". Person J, who is also covered in this report, was a serving member of the UDR when he was a key suspect in the murder of Gerard Casey in 1989. In early 1991, the RUC found documentation on large numbers of republicans in the home of Person J. He was released on bail shortly after that. During the time he was on bail, he was a key suspect in two murders, that of Councillor Eddie Fullerton and Tommy Donaghy, who was a member of Sinn Féin. Person J was also closely associated with the persons suspected of murdering Sinn Féin councillor, Bernard O'Hagan. This includes two Sinn Féin councillors in the period of mid-1991, Eddie Fullerton in May 1991 and Bernard O'Hagan in September 1991, and Tommy Donaghy, a Sinn Féin member, in August 1991. He was on bail and a former UDR member at that stage. He resigned from the UDR in late 1990. This is all contained in the report. We understand he was eventually sentenced to a year in prison. The judge, apparently, was not presented with any evidence that Person J was connected to loyalist paramilitaries, even though he was a key suspect in the 1989 murder of Gerard Casey and was well known to be closely associated with leading loyalists at that time. Months after he was released from prison, he was a key suspect in two further murders.

That is just one shocking episode in addition to Person K. I urge the Minister to look at both cases and to pursue this matter vigorously.

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