IRA prisoners seek jail time compensation

Hundreds of former IRA prisoners are attempting to have their convictions overturned and sue the Government for compensation.

By Jon Swaine Telegraph
26 Aug 2008

The republican party Sinn Féin has said that former inmates will allege that confessions were extracted from them under duress, amid mistreatment in security force holding centres in Northern Ireland.

About 300 former inmates of the Maze prison and other jails have consulted lawyers and prisoner campaign groups over potential claims, it has emerged.

Many of the former prisoners say they cannot find jobs, insurance or loans because of their convictions. They are also barred from entering some countries, including the US.

Carál Ní Chuilín, a Sinn Féin Assembly member, said that many of the IRA convicts spent time in prison for crimes they did not commit.

"The issue about this is it affected republicans and loyalists," she said. "People from unionist and nationalist working-class areas were in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up spending their lives in jail."

Michael Culbert, the director of Coiste na n-Iarchimi, a republican prisoners' lobby group, said: "So many of them were in jail for things they actually had nothing to do with. Many were convicted by signing false statements under torture or under the flimsiest of evidence and were locked away for years."

Earlier this year Danny Morrison, a former prisoner and Sinn Féin publicity director, successfully challenged a 1991 conviction he received for falsely imprisoning an IRA informer. The case of Morrison, who is now expected to receive substantial compensation, is set to be used as a precedent by new claimants.

Some relatives of those killed by the IRA have expressed their anger at the claims. Willie Frazer, of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, whose father James was shot dead by the IRA in 1975, said: "These people are terrorists who maimed and murdered innocent people. They want to rub salt in the wounds of the victims of their terrorist crimes."

"People must realise how sick these people are. Wanting compensation from the Government is one sickening step too far. We don't want to hear IRA men telling us they are entitled to compensation because they were locked up for their crimes. They must not succeed."