Serving security force members participated in the murders of three Co Armagh brothers carried out using a machine gun taken from a British military base in an “inside job”, the High Court has heard.
Two Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers and a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer were named as having allegedly joined loyalist paramilitaries in the plot to kill John Martin, Brian and Anthony Reavey.
Their brother, Eugene Reavey, is suing the police and Ministry of Defence (MoD) over the suspected collusion in the murders at the family’s home in Whitecross in January 1976.
Mr Reavey has claimed damages for negligence, misfeasance in public office and life-long trauma from how he was treated in the aftermath of the attack, his barrister confirmed.
Operating from a farm in Glenanne, Armagh, the UVF unit at the centre of the action is believed to have been responsible for up to 120 deaths in a sustained killing spree during the mid 1970s.
Opening the case, Desmond Fahy KC set out how gunmen entered the victims’ house and opened fire while they watched TV.
In an eyewitness account provided before his death, he described how one of the intruders opened fire with a machine gun.
The youngest victim was shot but tried to take cover under a bed, emerging about ten minutes later to discover his two brothers had been killed.
When Eugene Reavey learned about the shootings and returned home he was initially denied entry as RUC officers treated him with “disrespect and contempt”, the court heard.
Once he got inside, he saw the body of John Martin and described him as “like a rag doll just cut to pieces”.
Mr Fahy submitted: “The sight of his dead brother in the most horrendous and ugly of circumstances has led to life-long trauma and significant psychiatric injury.”
A further trail of blood led into a bedroom where Brian lay slumped dead in the fireplace.
He looked to Mr Reavey like someone who had just sat down and fallen asleep.
RUC officers allegedly carried out searches of the property at the same time, telling him they believed ammunition was being stored.
With no guns or bullets recovered from the home, Mr Reavey claims it was ransacked and furniture smashed to pieces by either soldiers or police officers after his brothers’ bodies were removed.
Later that night he was stopped along with other family members at an army checkpoint as the hearses were being driven back from the mortuary.
One soldier opened the boot of a car containing a bag of the victims’ blood-soaked clothing, emptied it on the ground and trampled on them, it was claimed.
Mr Fahy said: “The plaintiff’s case is that those individuals who murdered his three brothers comprised members of loyalist paramilitaries groupings, at least two serving members of the Ulster Defence Regiment… and at least one serving member of the RUC.”
He told the court UDR personnel Robert McConnell and James McNally, along with RUC Constable Laurence McClure were allegedly involved.
McConnell stole one of the weapons used in the killings, a Sterling submachine gun, while on duty at Glenanne military base in May 1974, according to Mr Reavey’s case.
McClure allegedly operated as a “quartermaster” with control over the bringing of the guns to the murder scene and removing them afterwards.
Counsel argued that the case against both defendants can be proved based on the strands of evidence about the weapons and the individuals allegedly involved.
Citing investigative reports, he set out how it was widely suspected that rogue soldiers facilitated the theft of guns from UDR bases for loyalist paramilitaries.
But Mr Justice Kinney heard the Sterling submachine gun was not stolen in the conventional sense involving any forced entry to the facilities at Glenanne.
“This was the archetypal ‘inside job’, and one which had murderous consequences,” Mr Fahy contended.
Claiming McConnell took the weapon, he insisted that any investigation was confined to the Royal Military Police without any report of the gun’s disappearance made to the RUC.
“The second defendant (MoD) was negligent in the manner in which it apparently allowed
The ‘theft’ of deadly weapons which were then given to loyalist paramilitaries to continue unchecked despite having clear information as to the risks involved,” Mr Fahy said.
Based on the alleged involvement of McConnell and McClure, he added: “The position of these two men within the UDR and the RUC allowed them, using operational knowledge available to them, to travel with seeming impunity to and from the murder scene at a time when this part of south Armagh was the most militarised area in the whole of western Europe.”
