A soldier who shot dead his officer in a training ground exercise almost 40 years ago may not give evidence at a new inquest, a court heard today.
A refusal to grant legal aid to Duncan Munro McLuckie, who killed Warrant Officer Bernard Adamson on a firing range in Co Fermanagh in 1972, has cast doubt on whether he will co-operate with the fresh investigation.
Since then, McLuckie has been convicted of murder over another death and is serving a life sentence in a high security prison in the north of England. He maintains that the death of 30-year-old father-of-four Mr Adamson was a tragic accident.
Official inquiries at the time concurred with that view and the original inquest in the months after the shooting delivered an open verdict.
But in an unusual legal move, Attorney General Baroness Scotland ordered a second inquest after Mr Adamson’s family raised concern about the findings of the initial one.
With Mr Adamson’s widow, Patricia Bruce, watching from the public gallery, a preliminary hearing in Belfast was told that McLuckie’s application to the Legal Services Commission (LSC) for legal aid had been turned down.
Solicitor for the inquest Ronan Daly told Northern Ireland’s senior coroner John Leckey that the prisoner’s legal representatives had now applied to the Armed Forces Minister for funding and were awaiting a reply.
The LSC’s decision was not wholly unexpected, as it only approves legal aid for witnesses to inquests in “exceptional circumstances”.
Lawyer for the Adamson family, Ivor McAteer, noted that McLuckie had made clear that while he was prepared to give evidence to the inquest, that was dependent on his legal costs being covered. “He has indicated his willingness to co-operate but only if he gets legal representation,” he said.
Mr Adamson, an officer in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), was fatally wounded when he was hit with a live bullet on the firing range in Letterbreen, five miles outside Enniskillen, during a battlefield simulation which was supposed to involve only blank cartridges. He died two weeks later in hospital in Belfast.
No criminal charges were brought against Private McLuckie, then 19, who fired the shot from an Army issue SLR rifle. He was later fined £43 in a military tribunal into the circumstances of the incident.
WO Adamson, who was from Enniskillen, was playing the role of an enemy target when he was shot in the side. An initial investigation found that live rounds had somehow got mixed in with the blank cartridges that were to be used.
Senior military officials from England had travelled to Northern Ireland to witness the firearms training and a quantity of live ammunition had been on site in case the top brass had been targeted by republican terrorists.
If McLuckie does co-operate - and is still in prison at the time - he will appear by videolink after the court ruled out bringing him across to Belfast to take the stand in person. The coroner had made inquiries about transporting the prisoner but had been informed that, due to the risk he presented to the public, he would have to travel by private jet at a cost of thousands of pounds.
PA