TWO FORMER RUC detectives have told of how they sought to pursue inquiries that Fr James Chesney was one of the Claudy bombers but were instructed by senior officers not to proceed, while a former IRA bomber said he knew nothing of the priest at the time.
One officer, a former RUC special branch Det Sgt, said he was within 15 minutes of searching Fr Chesney’s home in Co Derry but was told by superiors that “things were under control and not to go” to the priest’s house.
The officers separately contacted the BBC to claim that they were frustrated in their attempts to follow up on what Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson said was high level intelligence that Fr Chesney was one of the suspected IRA unit that bombed Claudy in July 1972 killing nine people and injuring over 30.
They made their comments in the wake of Mr Hutchinson’s findings that the RUC in 1972 was guilty of a “collusive act” in not arresting and questioning Fr Chesney and that former Northern Secretary William Whitelaw and former Catholic primate Cardinal William Conway appeared to acquiesce to this “wrong” decision.
The Det Sgt, who did not give his name, said yesterday that there was special branch information that Fr Chesney was the IRA’s director of operations in south Derry. He also said he had “good sources within the Provisional IRA in south Derry” validating this information.
He said he asked to have Fr Chesney arrested. “I’d heard he had a large amount of firearms in the parochial house and I rang my boss and said, ‘If I don’t hear within half an hour, I’m going there’, ” he said. “They gave me an answer back in about 15 minutes that things were under control and not to go.”
“I was just told, ‘leave it alone, we are looking after it’. The next thing I heard was that he was transferred to Malin Head ,” he added.
The former detective sergeant said he was never given an answer as to why Fr Chesney was not arrested. He said he continued to gather information about Fr Chesney that linked “him to other atrocities in south Derry like car bombs”.
A second officer said he was in the mortuary in Derry when the victims were brought in. “I can assure you that the decision not to pursue Mr Chesney was not made at a low level. It was not made by those investigating this or in any way associated with it,” he said. “This was made by one or two senior officers and I think it’s wrong . . . for people to come on and talk about the RUC in a collective or general way. That was not the case,” he added.
“This was, I think, a face saving exercise for the Catholic Church. If anyone had really wanted to deal with that particular man, they could have. They certainly wouldn’t just have moved him over the Derry/Donegal Border where he could have still carried on doing what he had been doing.”
Former IRA bomber Shane Paul O'Doherty told the Irish Newsthat while he was in the IRA in Derry in the early to mid-1970s he had never heard Fr Chesney mentioned as a member. "If Fr Chesney was involved in the IRA unit that bombed Claudy and if he was later still involved in the IRA while based in Malin Head, Donegal, it is extraordinary that IRA persons in the Derry brigade never heard of him until 2002 and were never able to make use of any of his services in the early or mid-1970s in Derry city or in Donegal."
The PSNI said it recognised “that opportunities to arrest and interview all of the suspects were not taken in 1972 . . . and we accept that more could and should have been done at the time”.
