FORMER British agent Willie Carlin has claimed that dozens of suspected IRA men caught up in a supergrass trial in the 1980s may have been acquitted after the judge received political direction.
Mr Carlin, who worked undercover for both MI5 and the British army, claims that former Lord Chief Justice Lord Lowry may have been directed to clear IRA suspects during the 1984 Raymond Gilmour case.
Prior to turning supergrass, Gilmour had operated as an informer both inside the INLA and IRA in Derry during the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1982 he agreed to give evidence against 35 republicans.
The episode was marked by a bizarre turn of events when the IRA kidnapped Gilmour’s father and threatened to shoot him in an effort to force the informer to withdraw his statements.
The trial later collapsed and 26 of those who had been arrested were released.
Lord Lowry, who survived an IRA assassination attempt at Queen's University Belfast in 1982, was highly critical of Gilmour, who never returned to his native city and died alone in England in November 2016.
In his book Mr Carlin, who at the time was working as an agent inside Sinn Féin, claims that a British army intelligence officer told him that the IRA suspects could be released.
The meeting took place months before the 1985 local elections, in which Sinn Féin intended to stand dozens of candidates across the north.
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According to Mr Carlin many of the candidates were expected to be IRA members.
He claims he was told that legal guidance in such cases could be offered by Northern Ireland Office and even Home Office in London.
He said the intelligence officer later claimed that in the Gilmour case “legal guidance comes with some private political guidance too”.
“It might be in the public interest, in the long term, not to convict,” the intelligence officer reportedly said.
“If, as you’ve said to us, IRA volunteers are being prepared all over the north for the May elections, then that’s a huge step towards some semblance of peace further down the road.
“Because it’s our guess that those volunteers will effectively and eventually be decommissioned and that’s got to be a massive first step.”
The intelligence appears to suggest that the IRA suspects could be released to bolster the fledging Sinn Féin electoral strategy at the time being pursued by former deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and others.
According to Mr Carlin the intelligence officer said: “However, as I judge it, Gilmour is the fly in the ointment for Derry and it won’t help your friend Martin McGuinness if his volunteers-cum-democrats are all locked up in Long Kesh.”
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