Former police officers in Northern Ireland have lost trust in the Police Ombudsman Michael Maguire, according to the highest-ranking Catholic to serve in police uniform. Former assistant chief constable Peter Sheridan was criticised by the ombudsman in a report on the background to the operation of the so-called on-the-runs letters to republicans.
The letters became controversial after the High Court in London said John Downey could not be tried for allegedly killing four British soldiers in the 1982 Hyde Park bombing because he had wrongly been given one.
Mr Sheridan yesterday complained to MPs that he had been unfairly treated by the ombudsman and was not made aware beforehand of the criticisms made by Mr Maguire.
In a forthright appearance before the House of Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee, Mr Sheridan said the ombudsman’s report “lacked fairness, lacked balance and lacked thoroughness”.
In his report, the ombudsman said the PSNI had wrongly used a higher standard of evidence to justify not seeking the arrest of on-the-runs republicans. During his career in the RUC and later the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Mr Sheridan said he had read “hundreds of investigations”.
In this one, however, the Ombudsman had arrived at conclusions first and then sought the evidence to support them, while “evidence to the contrary view received little weighting”, he said.
“I say this with considerable regret, I have always been a champion of the role of Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland, even to the extent of encouraging ex-officers to co-operate with PONI investigations,” said Mr Sheridan.
Democratic Unionist Party MP Ian Paisley said Mr Sheridan's strongly worded criticisms were "quite something", given that they were being made by such a senior former officer.
Mr Downey was given his letter after the PSNI told the Northern Ireland Office that he was not wanted in Northern Ireland, even though it knew that he was wanted by British police.
The PSNI had been asked to provide details of whether people were wanted or not and Mr Sheridan said he had met Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly, along with the then chief constable Hugh Orde. However, he said the PSNI had never known that this information was being used to give individual assurances. He said he only learned of that after Downey had been arrested in 2013.
