Free State Violence by Raymond Murray Page A

Northern Ireland when you wouldn’t even have heard that groan. All are nervous about being called in. People have never been through this before. At last the bearded clerk comes in and takes out the first witness. And so the five of us are called in turn, his intimate friends, all rooting for him. As witnesses we go and come back as if we had been led to the slaughter.
    My own turn comes. Into the corridor I go, at the top a small door marked ‘Private’. It reminds me somewhat of the atmosphere below deck in a submarine.
    The clerk is mumbling something, whether I have any objection to the James Bible. Two things flash through my mind – how strange in these ecumenical days, and should I quip ‘James the Second?’ On the exterior I reassure him. I am going to be nice and grovel if that means the release of an innocent man.
    The door opens. I enter the court-room. It seems very bright and is slashed with royal blue and scarlet curtains. I am instantly greeted by a dozen murmurs. The accused is seated. He reminds me of Christ, patient and forbearing. A look of suffering.
    The swearing. I have already made a statement for the solicitor. He just runs me through it in question form. I answer the questions a little more elaborately. I know the shorthand is at work and the tape recorder. A testimony to the good character and good behaviour of a friend. The defence solicitor is at my right at a desk. The prosecutor is seated opposite. The prosecutor questions me – going back to the day of internment, was I surprised he was taken? would I accept his word? I would. Any more questions? I take my first good look at the tribunal. They are all smiling. All three grey grave men. The Irish traditional saying to beware of the smile of an Englishman tempts my good will. But they are still smiling. Is the adage true? I feel as if I would like to hear the rest of the proceedings but I have to leave.
    It is one o’clock. We await the verdict in the waiting-room. The solicitor comes in. ‘Court adjourned until two o’clock. We can go to a canteen’. Another long hour of waiting but, if the tribunal has a working lunch, we console ourselves that the adjournment is a good sign. It all fits into the serious trappings of the show.
    The court has been an extraordinary affair. The prosecutor can not open up the prosecution case too much because then he would reveal the secrecy of some of the RUC Special Branch officers’ testimony and this he cannot do. The defence lawyer is shadow-boxing too because he is not aware of all that he is supposed to defend, except that he knows his client is innocent and it is hard to prove that an innocent man is innocent. Our solicitor is very competent and so he shadow-boxes until the tribunal fixes on something that might at first seem a minor detail but it is something to go on and is soon torn asunder by legal ingenuity. All hypnotise themselves into a real court. There has been no precedent in this kind of court proceedings of appeal. The learned tribunal feels its way.
    We are back at two o’clock. Twenty minutes later the respondent enters the waiting-room. ‘I am released’. Smiles and tears.

Brian Rafferty’s Hearing
    My appearance at the tribunal hearing of Brian Rafferty culminated in an attack on my character from the ‘prosecutor’. Reference was made to my campaign against the ill-treatment of detainees in RUC interrogation centres and RUC barracks. I then wrote to the Rt Hon. Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State, on 6 July 1974:
    Dear Mr Rees,
    On 13 June, 1974, I went to the Maze Prison, Long Kesh Camp, as a witness in the Tribunal Hearing of Mr B. J. Rafferty, Armagh. I have serious reservations regarding the morality and legality in international law of these tribunals. This you know from the pamphlet Whitelaw’s Tribunals which was forwarded to you when you were an MP in opposition. Yet Armagh priests, Fr Malachy Coyle, Fr Peter