FORMER Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble has called for a fresh inquiry into allegations gardaí colluded in the IRA’s murder of a High Court judge.
The former UUP leader - now Lord Trimble - said the killing of Lord Justice Gibson and his wife Cecily should be re-examined as questions were raised about several IRA murders in a BBC investigation this week.
Lord Trimble claimed the case for an inquiry was “overwhelming” following an Irish judge’s revelation last year that gardaí colluded in the murder of two senior Northern Ireland policeman.
In the documentary, a lawyer for the family of one of the officers called on the Irish Government to re-investigate allegations of collusion in a string of other IRA killings.
John McBurney, who represented the family of Ch Supt Harry Breen at the Smithwick Tribunal, said more than a dozen deaths “easily” could have involved collusion.
Following Judge Smithwick’s finding of garda collusion in the 1989 IRA murder of Ch Supt Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, he said a number of cases should be examined by an independent panel.
"It makes you think that when Judge Smithwick finds that in March 1989, a guard or guards provided the information to the same terrorist grouping that in 1988 was providing information which led to the murder by mistake of the Hanna family,” Mr McBurney told the BBC.
"Who was providing information which led to the murder of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson; who perhaps was assisting in the disposal in forensics in the murder of Terence McKeever; who assisted with knowledge about the movement of the Brinks Mat van on that fateful day in 1985?
"All of those events could quite easily have been contaminated by information from a guard or guards.”
He added: "That leaves you asking the question, ‘Do we not need to probe each and every one of those incidents in an organised and structured way, in order to identify precisely who the colluder or colluders were?’
"People have lost so much over these years. That's what they are longing for, those details and that acknowledgement."
Meanwhile, Lord Trimble urged the British and Irish governments to “put right” their decision not to investigate the killing of Lord and Lady Gibson.
The former UUP leader said calls for a full public inquiry into the incident were rejected due to a mistake in a 2003 review of the case.
The Gibson family has also broken its 27-year silence to call for a fresh inquiry.
Lord Justice Gibson and his wife Cecily were killed in an IRA bomb 1987 as they drove across the border returning from Dublin.
An inquiry into their deaths was rejected following Judge Peter Cory’s review of a number of notorious Troubles killings, including that of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane.
Judge Cory questioned the accuracy of intelligence stating that a member of An Garda Síochána assisted the IRA in the killing.
But Judge Smithwick found that Judge Cory was “mistaken” during his own review of the intelligence.
