Opinion

Analysis: Stormont's devolved justice powers could scupper UK amnesty plans

The devolution of justice powers to Stormont in Good Friday agreement is not insignificant when it comes to the next move
The devolution of justice powers to Stormont in Good Friday agreement is not insignificant when it comes to the next move The devolution of justice powers to Stormont in Good Friday agreement is not insignificant when it comes to the next move

IT has been quietly accepted in political and legal circles for some time that no British government will allow any of its soldiers to spend a single day in prison for crimes committed while serving in Northern Ireland.

That fact is at the root of more than two decades delay in resolving the Trouble's `legacy issues'.

The idea of British soldiers incarcerated over killings in the north is anathema to a cohort of voters both the Conservative and Labour Party need to secure the keys to 10 Downing Street.

Yet many those same campaigners and their unionist supporters on this side of the Irish Sea oppose the same clemency being applied to paramilitary killers.

This has taxed the ingenuity of generations of politicians tasked with solving the judicial component of legacy issues, because legally it is impossible to draw a distinction between security forces and terrorists when it comes to due process.

The obvious parallel for such singling out of one group over the other that QUB Professor of Law and Transitional Justice Kieran McEvoy can think of is "some South American dictatorship".

"The first case to come to court you are going to have lawyers argue that it is an abuse of legal process.

"If you went down the route of trying that you are going against international law and the state's international legal obligations to prevent impunity."

The controversial Lambeth Palace talks of last November - which he and colleagues from Queen's and the Committee on the Administration of Justice were involved in - was designed to examine mechanisms to ensure the four strands of the Stormont House agreement could proceed in a real-world scenario of no jail time.

These included the exchange of information about crimes committed for a reduction of sentences "to zero".

But what the British government's latest salvo has underlined is that the Stormont House agreement is not an international treaty (with attendant obligations) and so can be unilaterally discarded - or `varied', as the more palatable spin will put it.

For under its new plans, not only have prosecutions with their attendant risk of incarceration been taken off the table, but also the robust investigatorial powers which would allow victims and wider society to finally find out the truth about individual tragedies and wider atrocities.

There is much talk of `closure' in the briefings coming from Whitehall, but victims and those who campaign for them believe they will never find peace without that truth.

It remains to be seen if the outraged Irish government manages to engage the support of the US administration to force a change of course by the UK.

The timing of its briefing of Tory-supporting newspapers for the editions published on election day is unlikely to have been by chance, but a Queen's Speech announcement would coincide with a Northern Ireland high court judge delivering her findings on the Ballymurphy inquests into the killing of 10 people in west Belfast immediately after the introduction of internment.

And the devolution of justice powers to Stormont is not insignificant when it comes to the next move.

It can - and will - be argued that for London to reach into how Northern Ireland courts are run, and decide whether people can be prosecuted here for crimes committed here, is an undermining of the Good Friday agreement.

And, unlike the Stormont House agreement, it is an international treaty with international obligations.

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  • Bloody Sunday relatives say soldier amnesty means 'Irish lives don't matter'
  • Tony Blair government considered previous Troubles amnesty
  • Analysis: Leaked amnesty proposal is clumsy and callous (premium)
  • Plans to restrict future prosecutions of British soldiers who served during Troubles branded an 'insult' to victims
  • UK government unilateral plan simultaneously scraps Historical Investigations Unit and revives 'Troubles museum'
  • Timeline: Attempts to address legacy of violence in NI
  • Michaél Martin warns unilateral Troubles amnesty would be 'breach of trust' by British government