Read on blog or Reader seftonblogDrew Harris – liar or incompetent? psefton2014Jun 20
On 6th June 1990 the Provisional IRA placed a bomb under the car of James Sefton, a RUC officer, retired three years. The subsequent explosion killed him and his wife Ellen. My parents.
I began investigating the circumstances in 2002. I started with the PSNI. I was bounced around between senior officers , including the “salad dodger’ , before finally meeting Chief Inspector Blair, who had evidently drawn the short straw.
He told me that the papers had been stored away. He did not know who had made that decision. Nor when the papers had been stored. He was unable to give me any details about the investigation, if that is the correct word.
In March 2004 ACC Sam Kincaid informed me that the case was being examined by the Serious Crime Review Team. You would be unsurprised, Dear Reader to learn that I never heard a word from this ‘team’.
I asked the Historical Enquiries Team [lots of sporting analogies] to investigate. I also made a complaint to the Police Ombudsman.Each of these organisations told me that they had had access to all intelligence and there was nothing to report.
I had correspondence with Drew Harris, then ACC Crime Operations [was this not a ‘team’?] .He wrote : “ I can assure you that both the SCRT and the HET had full access to all available information and intelligence material during the course of their respective Reviews … Regrettably, the reviews conducted …did not uncover any new investigative opportunities.”
I sent a detailed reply:1st September 2014
Dear Mr Harris, James and Ellen Sefton
Further to your letter of 11th August and my initial reply by email on 20th August, you state in your letter :“I can assure you that both the SCRT and the HET had full access to all available information and intelligence information during the course of their respective enquiries.”
I would be glad if you would answer the following. On what do you base this assertion. Is it personal knowledge or are you relying on assurances given by others?If the latter, who gave you these assurances?
When you use the word “available”, what do you mean? Is it meant to qualify “intelligence”.Does the use of this word “available” indicate that someone decides to make information available to the investigators and if so, who?Does the use of the word imply that there is other relevant information which has been withheld?
Dr Laura Lundy, in her paper, Can the past be policed? Lessons from the Historical Enquiries Team Northern Ireland, conducts a critique of , inter alia, the access to intelligence. What can be distilled from her report is the following:Intelligence was still being found and collated while she was conducting her research. [I note Roy McComb’s late presentation of intelligence to the Smithwick Tribunal ]“All aspects of intelligence are managed by former RUC and Special Branch (sic) officers”
“It appears that the ‘old guard’ play a key role in the management and access to intelligence and perform a censoring role in respect of disclosure.”HET relies on the goodwill of partner agencies to cooperate. This would include the security services and Special Branch, now C3.
It appears to me that there could be three types of intelligence that may have been withheld in my parents’ case.Information held by a partner agency or by the police which points to the person who planted the device or more importantly to those persons who directed and approved the operation.
Information obtained by an informant , either participating or not, pointing to those responsible for directing planning approving or carrying the attack upon my parents.Similar information acquired by electronic or other means , not involving a CHIS. For example if Special Branch had decided to withhold information at the time of the murders, it is possible that the same personnel could make the same decision, many years on.
Certainly Sir John Hermon had his worries about “the Branch”.I should be glad;[a] if you would assure me that no information has come to light since investigations were completed ;and[b] that no such information as set out above has been withheld from investigators by either the PSNI or any partner agency.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Sefton
Harris did not reply to this but delegated it to Detective Chief Superintendent Hanna, who wrote: “ACC Harris has management responsibility for Serious Crime Review Team and the Historical Enquiries Team, and so his response is based on his personal knowledge that both teams had full access to all available information during the course of their reviews.”
Hanna replied to further correspondence , on 29th October 2014:“As previously pointed out PSNI have investigated the death of your parents and reviewed the investigation twice since the original investigation, there have been no new evidential opportunities identified”
The case papers were put in a box, again, and that was the last I heard from the PSNI. For context, Harris was the main man re intelligence and the point of contact for the Security Service until his appointment as Commissioner of AGS.
However on 14th June 1990 a communication was received by the RUC from An Garda Siochana [“AGS”] , by letter [possibly faxed] The content was that the AGS had received intelligence from a ‘previously reliable source’ that there were threats to three RUC officers.Namely:James Stepton [sic]A N OtherA N Other -serving in Tennent Street station
The source is recorded as stating that he overheard a conversation. He also provided a sketch map, hand drawn, which was communicated AGS-RUC.I have seen that map , on a laptop computer screen.
An overheard conversation is often a euphemism for being present during the conversation. A handy way for a participating informant to distance himself from the operation.The informant is likely to be a participating informant.
There was no ‘James Stepton’ on the force and a cursory investigation would have led the investigator to conclude to whom the report was referring.The hand drawn map is , in many respects, accurate. It is undoubtedly of the Ballygomartin area. It shows the turn of the road from the Woodvale Road to the Ballygomartin Road, Woodvale Park, Woodvale cricket ground, Glencairn park and a number of streets and roads.
Although the writing is indistinct on the screen , I am satisfied that it also depicts Lyndhurst Gardens [my family home]and Westway Drive, the street immediately to the east of Lyndhurst Gardens.The proportions are incorrect but the general ‘get up’ of the map shows a degree of local knowledge , which would not have been gleaned in an overheard conversation.
Most strikingly, there is an ‘X’ , or asterisk , which appears to be in Glencairn park an open area, not a street, which is east of Westway Drive and a line which appears to terminate at the top of Westway Drive.If the significance of this is the location and then transport of a device, it would involve the navigation of a deep gully , a small stream and a similar climb on the other side, possibly to avoid patrols and Viper.
It seems to me to be a planning document, showing how a bomb could be delivered to my parents’ house, avoiding the main roads. The information from the AGS was disseminated to the Regional Heads of Special Branch. One of the other officers who was mentioned in the message served at Tennent Street station and was warned about the threat. So we know that the message was acted upon by SB.
Why did it not form part of an investigation into my parents’ murders?
Why has Harris insisted that there was no intelligence?
I am told by the Operation Kenova team, who turned up this intelligence, that they found it , stored within the RUC/PSNI intelligence systems.A competent investigation team would have used the intel as a starting point. The reliable informant was telling AGS that he was present [though he distances himself by stating that he overheard it] when an PIRA ASU planned the murders of three police officers. One was actually killed. The planning obviously took place before 6th June 1990, and likely took place in the Republic, possibly in Dundalk.
His evidence would support a charge of conspiracy to murder.
The Army/Security Service had a number of informants, including Scapaticci , in place in Dundalk and other places. Was the planning meeting bugged? Who were the planners? Was the AGS informant withholding their identities? Or were their identities known to AGS and withheld from the RUC?If nobody in the RUC SB, on receipt of the intel said, do we have a James Stepton?- no but we have a James Sefton and he’s dead then they are truly incompetent.
What happened in respect of the third person named I know not.Harris gave evidence about his role to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011. He said the following:“I am responsible for all matters of intelligence, all matters in respect of homicide investigation. At the moment, I am also—have major responsibilities in respect of what’s known as legacy matters., and I would work closely with the historical inquiry team, who are investigating Troubles -related deaths, and they have some 3,260 deaths to investigate.”
Harris was given every opportunity to come clean on what he and others knew. When I said in my letter of 1st September 2014:”It appears to me that there could be three types of intelligence that may have been withheld in my parents’ case.Information held by a partner agency or by the police which points to the person who planted the device or more importantly to those persons who directed and approved the operation.Information obtained by an informant , either participating or not, pointing to those responsible for directing planning approving or carrying the attack upon my parents.Similar information acquired by electronic or other means , not involving a CHIS.“
Harris was being given a clear opportunity to disclose that information existed. Aside from his mendaciousness, the new information demonstrates what I have always alleged- that Special Branch cared not, even for their own and that this information, in existence for thirty four years , was known to a number of James’ colleagues, not one of whom disclosed it to me.I am considering my next steps. |
The Broken Elbow 