Hyde Park bomb ruling threatens Stormont

Hyde Park bomb ruling threatens Stormont

First minister says he will resign unless there is judicial review into decision to free John Downey

• Hyde Park 1982 IRA bomb suspect goes free
• Live Statement on Hyde Park bombing suspect walking free
• 'One long endgame, with no end in sight'

  Northern Ireland government at risk of collapse over Hyde Park bomb ruling

  First minister says he will resign unless there is judicial review into decision to free John Downey
  • Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
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  • The Guardian, Wednesday 26 February 2014 13.22 GMT

  
  

  John Downey, who was accused of the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, walked free on Tuesday. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Rex

  Government ministers were working frantically on Wednesday night to save Northern Ireland's power sharing settlement following the collapse of the Hyde Park bombing trial. The Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, was meeting the first minister, Peter Robinson, urging him not to pull down the devolved institutions in protest at secret amnesties for IRA fugitives.
  Robinson warned that he would resign as first minister unless there is a judicial review into how the case against suspected IRA Hyde Park bomber John Downey collapsed. His resignation would trigger the collapse of the devolved five-party coalition dominated by Robinson's Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin.
  The DUP leader said: "We are not on the brink of a crisis – we are in a crisis. This is a crisis." He said the scheme had created "a crisis of confidence that the people of Northern Ireland will have on the policing and judicial processes. And they are right to be angry".
  The judge's decision to free Downey in the Old Bailey on Tuesday has resulted in the most dangerous political destabilisation at Stormont since devolution was restored in 2007. Robinson and the DUP have come under fire from grassroots unionists over their continuation in government with Sinn Féin since revelations in court that secret letters from the Northern Ireland Office gave a de facto amnesty to 187 IRA fugitives or so called "on the runs", including Downey.
  His DUP colleague and North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds said the amnesties, kept secret from unionists in negotiations leading up to the 2006 St Andrew's Agreement, would have "very, very serious implications for Northern Ireland devolution".
  Downey, from Co Donegal, had been charged with the murders of four soldiers who died in the Hyde Park bomb in 1982, after his arrest at Gatwick Airport last year. He strongly denied all the charges put to him and pointed out that he was a strong backer of the peace process.
  The case against him collapsed after it emerged in court that he had a letter from 2007 that mistakenly suggested he was immune from prosecution over the Hyde Park atrocity.
  Deputy first minister and Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness appealed for unionists to "calm down" over the controversy saying "no sensible person will thank anyone for threatening these institutions". His party colleague Gerry Kelly, who bombed the Old Bailey in 1973, accused unionists of "electioneering" over their threats to pull out of the regional government. Kelly said the letters to the "on the runs", which also include high profile IRA fugitives such as Sinn Fein's former press director Rita O'Hare, had been a pragmatic and necessary move to push the peace process forward.
  Security sources in Northern Ireland told the Guardian the "on the runs" scheme was part of negotiations aimed at winning support within the IRA for the decommissioning of its arms – a key unionist demand during talks leading up to a political settlement.
  But even strong supporters of the peace process such as former deputy first minister and Foyle MP for the nationalist SDLP Mark Durkan criticised the covert nature of the deal for IRA "on the runs". In a pointed reference to former Labour Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain, Durkan told the House of Commons the deal had "proved that some of us were right when we warned the right honourable member for Neath [Peter Hain] and others that they were blighting the peace process with their penchant for side deals, pseudo-deals, sub-deals, shabby deals and secret deals – which are now doing major damage to the process more widely."
  Before the crucial meeting with Robinson, Villiers said: "I do hope, despite the long shadow this case is likely to cast, that the Northern Ireland parties will continue to work together to see if a solution can be found to the issues of the past."
  Loyalist paramilitaries have also entered the controversy with the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association demanding that all historical Troubles-related cases involving loyalists and members of the security forces be scrapped. The West Belfast Branch of the UDA-aligned Ulster Political Research Group said all loyalists and security force members caught up in historical inquiries should be granted amnesties. The UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force along with their political allies have claimed that investigations into past Troubles-related crimes have focused in the main on loyalist groups as well as the security forces with the authorities less inclined to pursue ex-IRA members over unsolved murders from the conflict.
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