Mr. Raymond McCord:

No. As was quite rightly said, every time I went to court - and it will be 27 years this year - it was a charade. That is the nicest way I could put it. Judge after judge kept changing, so there was no continuity. This year, we have had several different judges looking at it. The biggest problem we have probably had, practically in every case but particularly in young Raymond's case, is the lack of documentation, despite judges ordering years ago to hand us over disclosure for the inquest to go ahead. The State has refused to do it. Several years ago, a senior judge told them to go ahead and start handing the documentation over in order that when the time came to start the actual inquest, it would mean that my legal team would not have thousands of pages of documents. That never took place. It is 27 years this year since my son was murdered and there is still no inquest. We were in court several days ago; we are supposed to be in court tomorrow. A couple of days ago, in front of another judge, as regards tomorrow's case, they turned me down twice for legal aid. We appealed it. They are still turning us down. Then they refused to give us a hearing in court the other day in front of a decent judge, who actually sits as president on the Victims Payments Board, Gerry McAlinden. They quashed the two decisions for no legal aid. Automatically, you take it for granted we will appear in court tomorrow and legal aid will be granted. We were told we just had to reapply. We did reapply yesterday and they have turned us down again. The courts and the system, particularly the system, are determined that young Raymond's case will never be heard at a British court.

A great supporter of mine - and he supports other victims - is Fr. Seán McManus in Washington. Each year in Washington, at the Northern Ireland Bureau breakfast, he has asked chief constables and secretaries of state - and he is not demeaning of other cases when he says this - what is it the British Government is so frightened of in the Raymond McCord Jnr. case, more so than the Scappaticci case or the Pat Finucane case? That is an Irish Catholic priest speaking up for somebody from the unionist community. He is an Irish Catholic priest who is a great friend of mine. He accepts me as a person and a father who has lost his son. He does not see me as a unionist or a nationalist. He puts it the right way: he sees me as a father fighting for my son. Seán McManus is originally from Fermanagh and a great man. He is fighting for young Raymond's case in Washington, which is what my politicians or - I will correct myself - the unionist politicians should have been doing from 1997. The unionist politicians and other ones know how long Raymond's case has gone on, and in all those years there has not been a unionist politician who has walked into court with me.

We had a screening of our victims' film last night and I referred to it at that. I refer in the victims' film to the Ballymurphy cases. Nationalist and republican politicians, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, come down to the courts to support the Ballymurphy families because I have been there supporting them too as well as people affected by Bloody Sunday and other cases. People have their own opinions about politicians coming into the court as a point-scoring exercise. I watched the genuine support given by some Sinn Féin politicians, whose politics would be different from mine, and I like to emphasise this too because people think Ray McCord is coming down as a unionist. I am from a unionist community but I do not vote for a unionist party, the reason being I have friends within unionism and within the parties, but I will not vote for parties that I see as sectarian in any way or parties that have never supported unionist victims of the state, in particular.

I go back to the point that the system - I have to watch my words here - has an agenda. We are talking about people within the British Government security agencies. They are determined that my son's case will never be heard in a British court. The only option I have is for Dublin to take Raymond's case with them and to hear the truth and what has not come out in the courts here, which is essentially being censored by the courts, so it can be told in Europe and support the Irish Government's challenge.