Peter Hain calls for NI Troubles amnesty
Peter Hain says prosecutions related to the Northern Ireland conflict should end, as Britain prepares for the first ever state visit to this country by an Irish head of state.
The call from the former Labour Northern Ireland secretary would mean no-one would be pursued for the 3,000 unsolved murders from the Troubles, an idea opposed by Prime Minister David Cameron.
Irish President Michael D Higgins, who arrives in Britain on Monday and attends a state banquet with the Queen at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, said said progress in the Northern Ireland peace process should not be about forgetting the past.
“There are a lot of very difficult memories and it would be to my mind wrong to suggest to anyone that you should, as it were, wipe the slate clean.”
Peter Hain told the Times an amnesty would make victims and survivors “desperately angry”, but it was necessary for the future of Northern Ireland.
‘Not desirable in a normal situation’
“I think there should be an end to all conflict-related prosecutions,” he said. “That should apply to cases predating the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
“This is not desirable in a normal situation. You would never dream of doing this in England, Scotland and Wales, but the Troubles were never normal.”
Mr Hain’s intervention follows the collapse of the trial of John Downey, who was accused of killing four soldiers in London’s Hyde Park.
The high court in London threw out the case after it emerged that he had been given assurances he would not be pursued over the 1982 bombing.
It emerged that Irish republicans who were “on the run” (OTR) had received letters telling them police were not pursuing them for crimes carried out before the Good Friday agreement.
Unionist politicians said they had not known about these assurances, prompting the British government to set up an inquiry into OTRs.
Guest of the Queen
President Higgins will spend four days on his extended visit to Britain as a guest of the monarch, a sign he says is symbolic of the importance both countries place on the normalisation of relations more than 90 years after Irish independence.
The visit to Ireland by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in 2011 paved the way for President Higgins’s trip.
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and ex-IRA commander Martin McGuinness will also attend the banquet hosted by the Queen.
