Eight investigators at Nuala O’Loan’s office are to examine intelligence files on Joe “Buck” Haughey, 52, a former leading republican, who is alleged to have worked for the RUC.
Mary Travers, 22, was gunned down by the IRA on April 8, 1984 as she left Mass with her father Tom, then a magistrate. Tom Travers, who was thought to be the intended target, was badly wounded in the attack outside St Brigid’s church in south Belfast’s Derryvolgie Avenue.
At the time, Travers claimed to recognise Haughey, a well-known republican from Unity Walk in North Belfast, as his attacker but Haughey was acquitted when doubt was cast on the identification.
Although Travers had picked him out in an identity parade, the magistrate had earlier produced a photofit that bore little resemblance to Haughey and police could find no forensic evidence in Haughey’s home.
Identification was made more difficult by the fact that Travers’ attacker was wearing a wig. The magistrate still insists he is confident of his assailant’s identity.
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Travers made his complaint to the ombudsman earlier this year after a website published allegations that Haughey was an informant. Although the claims were denied in a press statement, they were backed up by Kevin Fulton, a former special branch agent who knew Haughey when he was in the IRA. The ombudsman’s investigators are now examining special branch files relating to Haughey.
Travers has told O’Loan’s office that he is concerned details of Haughey’s links to the security forces may not have been passed on to CID officers investigating his daughter’s murder or to the prosecuting authorities. He is also concerned that vital evidence or witnesses who could have identified the attacker, and the other person who murdered his daughter, were not produced in court.
Security sources say the case opens up similar issues to that of Freddie Scappaticci, the IRA deputy head of internal security, who worked for British Military Intelligence. While Scappaticci was in control of it, the IRA’s internal security unit murdered several people on suspicion of being informants.
Scappaticci is currently being investigated by Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who has interviewed him. Stevens will remain in Northern Ireland for up to a year after he retires to complete the inquiry.
Depending on the ombudsman’s findings, Stevens’ role may now be enlarged to include Haughey, who had worked closely with Scappaticci and also with Fulton, who has supplied information to both the ombudsman and Stevens on Haughey and Scappaticci.
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Taken together, the two cases raise serious questions about the role of intelligence agencies in controlling paramilitary groups. Haughey was one of the senior republicans who met regularly with Jim Craig, a UDA brigadier who supplied information to the Provos in return for clearance to carry out building site rackets in nationalist areas without being attacked.
The protection payments extorted by Craig from builders were supposed to benefit the UDA but Craig embezzled most of the proceeds. He passed the movements of leading loyalists who challenged him to the IRA, with the result that a number of them, including John McMichael, the deputy commander of the UDA, and Lennie Murphy, a leader of the UVF’s notorious Shankill Butcher gang, were assassinated.
Craig was murdered by the UDA in 1988 after a special branch officer showed a UDA contact a surveillance tape of a meeting between Craig and Haughey. Like many senior republicans, Haughey has come under suspicion of being from the organisation in the past. He was ordered out of Belfast in the 1970s after being accused of misusing £2,000 of IRA funds, but he was allowed home when the money was returned.
Some former IRA members feel that this may have turned him against the republican movement. They also point to his lenient treatment in a court case in November 1981, when he received a suspended sentence for hijacking a car used in the murder of the deputy governor of Crumlin Road prison and falsely imprisoning the owner. He was also acquitted of IRA membership charges at that time.