Mr. Eugene Reavey:

The work of Eames and Bradley was badly hampered by the definition of "victim" that was imposed on them by the British authorities. My problem was that the victim and the perpetrator were seen in the same light. I suppose I have come away from that to some extent over time. Perhaps I am seeing things in a better light. Some work could be done in this area to close the gap. I have heard the word "closure" three or four times this morning. I normally associate the word "closure" with politicians and press reporters. I seldom hear a victim talking about closure. In my vocabulary, I do not know what closure means because I will not get closure until we get answers to the questions we have been asking for many years.

People asked about the Glenanne gang. I live in the immediate area. The UDR station was less than a mile from my home. Three of my brothers were murdered by members of the Glenanne gang in 1976. I have to say the circumstances were very suspicious. On the night in question, there were checkpoints on all the roads leading to our house. The police and the army say that the checkpoints were not legal. If they were not legal checkpoints, they must have been illegal checkpoints. In later years, I came to know which members of the gang carried out those murders. Séamus Mallon lived in Markethill. The word was on the street in Markethill over the next couple of days. In fact, a publican from Markethill told my father the names of the people who murdered his sons. He lived for 15 years after that. He only told me those names two or three days before he died. Guns went missing from Glenanne. It was no surprise.

A good few of those who were in the Glenanne gang were members of the Glenanne UDR centre. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings were carried out by the same gang. I have had many hours of discussions with the historical inquiries team about all of this. There is no doubt that the Glenanne gang carried out the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. We have been asked whether we get enough information from people in the North. Perhaps the people in the South would say they did not get enough information from the authorities in the South about this incident.

Perhaps the historical inquiries team had its difficulties. I do not know all the politics of it. I can say that in the Reavey case, the historical inquiries team was the finest group of officers I have ever met. Mr. Cox was the first man who ever went in to shake my mother's hand. It took 30 years. He said on behalf of the British Government and the British authorities that he was sorry for the deaths of her sons. No police officer ever came to her. She never had any therapy. She had nothing. When her sons were killed, two of them were on the sick over Christmas. She was not entitled to compensation because the British Government was paying their wages for the couple of weeks in question and she did not suffer any financial loss. The other young fellow, who was 18, lived for two or three weeks before he died. The coroner said that he died from natural causes. We fought that as best we could. Some 35 years later, Mr. Cox showed me where the coroner changed his report three days after the original inquest. Never in the history of the state of Northern Ireland has an inquest report been changed other than by going back and having another court case or something.

When one talks about collusion, one must wonder how far it went. Mr. Cox will testify that the collusion went as far as the Attorney General. We have evidence of that in the case of the Rock Bar attack. The barrister for the UDR and the police, which carried out those shootings, said he had obtained a nolle prosequi sentence. The only person who can authorise a nolle prosequi is the Attorney General. As the members of this committee will be aware, the Attorney General is in touch with the Prime Minister many times every day. It turned out that all those involved in that case got off. It was subsequently proven by the historical inquiries team that they were the perpetrators of that bombing and shooting.

There are 120 cases of collusion with regard to the Glenanne gang. I am told that another 17 cases are pending. I do not know how the RUC could not link those cases. It had all the forensics. There was a pool of guns and a mixture of guns would be used in one murder or another. I listened to Assistant Chief Constable White on TV. He said that the historical inquiries team gleaned this information from the police files. It would never have left those files if it had not been for the historical inquiries team. If the authorities here have any information about the Glenanne cases in their files, I encourage and plead with them to hand it over to the appropriate authorities in Northern Ireland