'Cold Case' Squad to review 2,100 Troubles Deaths
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:42 am
A Special team of 100 staff, including 50 detectives, is to be recuited to reinvestigate killings that took place during the troubles of Northern Ireland. More than 2,100 deaths will be re-examined.
Those recuited will include retired Royal Ulster Constabulary ( RUC) Northern Ireland, and Southern Irish Police(Garda) detectives as well as serving officers from British Forces. Two officers, one retired and one serving, are already working to set up the largest ''cold case'' review in British or indeed Irish history.
There has been speculation for some time that unsolved murders would be re-examined. Hugh Orde, (Police Service of Northern Ireland) chief constable, has now confirmed that the review will cover about 300 disputed killings by the security forces, not classified as murder, as well as 1,800 terrorist killings for which no conviction had been secured.
The security force killings that will be reopened range from plastic bullet deaths to SAS ambushes, such as the one that killed eight IRA men and a passer-by during an IRA attack on a police station in Loughgall in 1987.
The whole exercise is expected to take six years to complete.
Sunday Times Ireland,
www.sundaytimes.co.uk
Why wasn't it done sooner? Why wait all this time?
Those recuited will include retired Royal Ulster Constabulary ( RUC) Northern Ireland, and Southern Irish Police(Garda) detectives as well as serving officers from British Forces. Two officers, one retired and one serving, are already working to set up the largest ''cold case'' review in British or indeed Irish history.
There has been speculation for some time that unsolved murders would be re-examined. Hugh Orde, (Police Service of Northern Ireland) chief constable, has now confirmed that the review will cover about 300 disputed killings by the security forces, not classified as murder, as well as 1,800 terrorist killings for which no conviction had been secured.
The security force killings that will be reopened range from plastic bullet deaths to SAS ambushes, such as the one that killed eight IRA men and a passer-by during an IRA attack on a police station in Loughgall in 1987.
The whole exercise is expected to take six years to complete.
Sunday Times Ireland,
www.sundaytimes.co.uk
Why wasn't it done sooner? Why wait all this time?