State cleared of loyalist death

An official inquiry into the murder of a loyalist assassin inside a top-security prison yesterday ruled out state collusion in his death, blaming instead negligence by police and the prison authorities.

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Owen Paterson, said he was sincerely sorry that "serious and profound failings in the system" had facilitated the murder of the Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright by members of the Irish National Liberation Army in 1997.

Minimal criticism was voiced of the Government or MI5, with the police and prison service bearing the brunt of the report's condemnation.

Wright, who was reputedly responsible for a dozen or more murders of Catholics during a career which earned him the nickname of "King Rat", was shot dead by three INLA members.

Reaction to the report was largely muted, in contrast to the widespread welcome given to the recent report into Bloody Sunday. Instead, both republicans and unionists criticised the 700-page document, which was delivered after a five-year inquiry that cost £30 million ($63 million).

The Democratic Unionist Party, which heads the devolved administration in Belfast, said the facts would lead many to conclude that the chain of events which led up to the killing "stretches coincidence to breaking point". Sinn Fein also voiced suspicions, though from a different perspective, saying the report failed to examine Wright's relationships with senior Unionist politicians. A Sinn Fein spokesman, John O'Dowd, declared: "It is our firm view that Wright and others were controlled, directed and manipulated by the British state."

The view of the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party was that the dangers associated with the Maze "cannot excuse the litany of negligence that the inquiry found, including both omissions and wrongful acts which facilitated the murder".

Wright's father, David, who has for years campaigned for information about his son's death, said it was appalling that police had not passed on intelligence concerning threats against him. This "constituted dreadful acts of omission that facilitated his death", he said.

The report said: "The panel's conclusion is that the police failure to communicate the intelligence was a wrongful omission, which facilitated the death of Billy Wright in a way that was negligent rather than intentional."

It added that the shooting had been facilitated, though not deliberately, by factors such as a prison service failure to address recognised management problems.

It pointed out that guns had been smuggled in, by means still unknown, while an internal fence had been cut and that measures had not been taken to seal off an insecure roof over which the gunmen had scrambled.

In addition, Wright's name had been called over a Tannoy system, which alerted the INLA that he would be placed in a van, used for visits, which would be accessible to them.

Wright was one of Northern Ireland's most feared loyalist assassins, surviving for years despite determined efforts to "take him out". The police wanted to lock him up and regularly arrested him for interrogation, while rival loyalists threatened him and ordered him into exile. The IRA launched up to half a dozen attempts to blow him up.

In the end, it was predictable that he should meet a violent death, though it came as a surprise that he died inside what was supposed to be Europe's most secure prison.

He was enthusiastic about both indulging in violence and speaking about it, his shaven head, heavily tattooed body and characteristic strut radiating restrained menace.

He was described as having "a bullet head, close cropped with small ears and deep-set piercing eyes".

But he had more complexities than the average loyalist assassin, having a religious dimension that led him to act for a period as a lay preacher. At other times, though, he did drugs. He also had more brains than most and prison lecturers remembered him as by far the brightest of loyalist pupils.

Yet the fact that he deliberately courted publicity, giving newspaper interviews which kept him in the public eye, made him a marked man. His statements amounted to challenges to both police and the IRA: come and get me, he seemed to say.

- INDEPENDENT