Ireland’s refusal to say sorry to men convicted of Sallins train robbery is shameful |
Brian McNally, who was 83, is being laid to rest today. When Osgur Breatnach (75) awakes on this funeral day, he will be seized by a terrible panic, as happens every time he opens his eyes from sleep. It is touch-and-go whether Nicky Kelly (75) will be well enough to attend the funeral as he spends much of his time in hospital nowadays. Fifty years ago, gardaí forced these three men to sign false confessions to a crime they had nothing to do with, culminating in their wrongful convictions and collective prison sentences of 33 years’ penal servitude. Half a century later, after a court of law and a president of Ireland accepted their innocence, the State still cannot bring itself to say sorry.
If being beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened and terrorised amounted to their cruel and inhuman treatment in the 1970s, the same description applies to how successive governments and ministers for justice have denied the men an apology and the independent public inquiry they have continued to seek. Franz Kafka could hardly have imagined such outlandish forces of the law as haunt them.
It was a case of rounding up some suspects fast after a gang lying in wait in Sallins, Co Kildare flagged down the mail train from Cork to Dublin in March 1976 and robbed it of £200,000 or £300,000, according to differing reports. Among those arrested were Kelly and Breatnach, both then members of the fledgling Irish Republican Socialist Party, and McNally, a previous member. Their interrogators have gone down in history as the gardaí’s notorious Heavy Gang.
The men were put on trial in the non-jury Special Criminal Court, their “confessions” being the only evidence against them. Despite medical testimony that they were beaten in custody, the court ruled their injuries were........