Los Angeles-based academic and writer Chris Bray – one of the few in the United States to have followed the Boston College saga from the outset – pens a few penetrating and caustic thoughts on today’s (Thursday’s) decision by Barra McGrory’s PPS to prosecute Ivor Bell for aiding and abetting in the disappearance of Jean McConville.

And he asks: aiding and abetting precisely who?

After more than a year of bumbling indecision, the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland has taken a bold stand: They are beginning to prepare to think about discussing a way to begin. Franz Kafka, call your office.

Fourteen months ago, using questionable evidence obtained from the archives at Boston College with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecutors in Northern Ireland filed charges against Ivor Bell, who is now 77 years-old. Bell is reputed to have been chief of staff to Gerry Adams during the period when the latter was allegedly the Belfast commander of the Provisional IRA, and he was charged in the 1972 kidnapping and murder of the Belfast widow Jean McConville. But he wasn’t charged with that kidnapping and murder; rather, he was charged with having aided and abetted in that crime.

Today, forty-three years after McConville was killed, no one has been charged with killing her, or even publicly identified as a suspect; Ivor Bell is accused of aiding a crime committed by ghosts. News stories have alleged that Adams ordered her killing, but even those claims lack the most basic facts: Who took her out of her home? Who drove her to the beach where her body was found? Who killed her? In the police version of events, which must necessarily underlie an allegation of aiding and abetting, what was the name of the person who pulled the trigger? In short, if Ivor Bell aided and abetted, who did he aid and abet? Did Bell assist a self-firing gun?

After Bell was first charged last March, the PPS began a long delaying action that saw them returning to court every few weeks to ask for one continuance after another. Finally, this May, a judge in Belfast gave the prosecutors an ultimatum: Make a decision in June, or have the case thrown out of court. So they did. On Thursday morning, the PPS marched back into court to announce that they had decided to proceed with the prosecution of Ivor Bell. They return to court in six weeks.

They are not, however, returning to court in six weeks to begin to prove their case. Here’s how the Irish Times describes the next court date in its story on the most recent developments:

“Mr Bell was released on continuing bail and ordered to come back to court in six weeks when a date will be set for a preliminary inquiry to establish whether the case will proceed to trial in the Crown Court. While the PPS lawyer said six weeks was needed before prosecutors would be in a position to set a date due to extensive prepartory work required, Bell’s solicitor Peter Corrigan questioned the timeframe.”

If “extensive prepartory work” is required, what  have they been doing for the last fourteen months? Never mind that: They will now begin to prepare. In another month and a half, we’ll know if prosecutors in Belfast are able to set a date for an initial hearing that might then, at some future point, lead to an actual trial. Perhaps at the hypothetical future trial someone in Northern Ireland’s system of law enforcement will be able to whisper the name of Jean McConville’s actual supposed murderer. But perhaps not.

The murder of Jean McConville has become a can to be kicked endlessly down a road. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston must be very proud to have helped with this important effort.

So, now it is official. When the Irish media decided, almost en masse, to censor Catherine Murphy’s Dail remarks about Irish media billionaire Denis O’Brien, they had no way of knowing whether the High Court injunction at the centre of the affair claimed supremacy over Dail privilege.

This means that The Irish Times, RTE and other mainstream Irish media, not knowing if the injunction was intended to over-ride Dail privilege, decided to play it safe and crumbled in the face of O’Brien’s massive wealth.

Rather than risk irritating the great man and prompting him to launch a legal action, which a first year law student could have told them he could never win, they chose to silence an elected representative and deny their readers access to words she spoke in their parliament.

Not one significant Irish media organisation opted for the principled alternative: publish Catherine Murphy’s remarks, let O’Brien challenge the action in the courts, if he dared, and mobilise public and political opinion against the arrogance and hubris of Ireland’s 0.01%.

Reports today arising out of a belated legal action taken by RTE say that the judge at the centre of the legal controversy, Mr Justice Donald Binchy, will make public tomorrow (Wednesday) the reasons he granted O’Brien an injunction preventing RTE from broadcasting a documentary dealing with the billionaire’s acquisition of SiteServ.

None of the Irish media therefore knew what the judge had said about the scope of his injunction before they blacked Catherine Murphy’s speech.

The thirty-some years of the Northern Troubles saw the Irish media hit some low points, involving both the acquiescent acceptance of State censorship and the enthusiastic practicing of self-censorship, but the O’Brien-Murphy affair is its own, unique, sad and shameful chapter in the narrative of Irish journalism.

Imagine these two contrasting scenarios.

In one case, in country A, a newspaper gets hold of secret documents which show that successive governments have been lying about a matter of supreme national importance. Without hesitation and as soon as humanly possible, the newspaper starts printing stories about the documents.

The government goes beserk and its Attorney-General seeks and secures a court injunction banning that newspaper from further publication. The newspaper’s rivals get hold of the same documents and begin publishing as well. As this happens, and as details of the secrets circulate, public opinion veers increasingly to the side of the media.

The government seeks another injunction which is refused by the court, the judge declaring:

A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.

The government appeals the rejection and takes its case to the highest court in the land which also rejects the government’s case. One of its judges says:

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people…….

The press in country A thereby wins an historic case and does so by publishing its story without seeking the government’s view on the matter, thus first asserting the right to free expression, and then allowing the courts to decide the matter. The episode is regarded as a high watermark in the history of country A’s free and forthright media.

In the second case, in country B, a billionaire businessman, seeks and secures a court injunction preventing a television station from broadcasting a documentary alleging shenanigans in his financial affairs and improper relations with government-regulated bodies. The injunction applies to other media.

Not long afterwards, a member of country B’s parliament stands up in that chamber and reveals what are widely believed to be the salient points in the injuncted documentary. The parliamentarian does this under the cover of parliamentary privilege, which normally means that the media are free to repeat the words said in parliament, as long as they stick faithfully to those words.

This is because parliaments in most countries are judged to be legally superior to courts, not least because they make the laws that the courts enforce.

Even though the media in country B have published and broadcast words spoken under parliamentary privilege in the past, they unanimously decide that because the businessman is unbelievably rich and could sue them out of business and might even do damage to their advertising revenue, that the court injunction also applies to words spoken under the umbrella of parliamentary privilege. Therefore they decide not to print or broadcast a single word spoken by that parliamentarian.

In doing so they have accorded the billionaire businessman superior legal and political rights to the parliament in country B.

The inaction of country B’s media attracts derisive headlines in other countries like this: “Country B’s Media, Fearing Lawsuits, Steers Clear Of A Billionaire”. The barb is all the more painful because the story appeared in the paper featured in the story about country A above.

Internet outlets and blogs have no inhibitions and freely report the words of the parliamentarian, thereby not only making the mainstream media look risible but underlining one of the reasons why the media in country B are ailing and losing readers and viewers to social media.

Eventually, after several days of looking weak, cowardly and ridiculous, some of the media outlets in country B decide that they will challenge the scope of the billionaire’s injunction in the courts.

This is very strange because the only people, apart form the billionaire’s attorneys, who have said the injunction covers parliamentary privilege are the media in country B!

Not only that but it will be next Tuesday before the case is heard and possibly many days after that before a judgement is announced. By that time, thanks to social media, many of the people in country B will have read the parliamentarian’s words anyway.

This is not a story out of Grimms Fairy Tales but real life events.

If you can guess what the events in country A and country B really were, send your answers on a postcard to: The Director-General, RTE, Dublin, Ireland or to: Kevin O’Sullivan, Editor, Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland.

Alternatively just post a comment here.

The Irish people are being denied the right to know about serious allegations being leveled at prominent Irish businessman and billionaire, Denis O’Brien by virtue of a High Court injunction forbidding RTE from broadcasting a programme about his controversial purchase of the infrastructure and utility support company, Siteserv.

In particular the programme is believed to have investigated his dealings with the liquidator of Siteserv, Kieran Wallace and the CEO of the Irish Banking Resolution Corporation, Mike Aynsley.

Denis O’Brien

Mr O’Brien’s road to a business fortune began when, according to the Moriarty Tribunal, he almost certainly greased the palm of Government Minister of Communications, Michael Lowry in 1995 to secure a lucrative mobile phone contract on behalf of Esat Digiphone, a consortium he headed.

Similar allegations that he was shown favoritism over his purchase of Siteserv were aired in Dail Eireann yesterday by the Independent TD for Kildare, Catherine Murphy. She was able to defy the High Court injunction by invoking Parliamentary or Dail privilege, although leading Irish media outlets, such as The Irish Times, have declined to report her remarks in full.

So here are the words spoken in the Dail yesterday by Catherine Murphy. At least some Irish people will now be able to fully inform themselves about the reasons for Mr O’Brien’s injunction. (Note to Mr O’Brien’s lawyers: in America there is a thing called the First Amendment of the Constitution. Look it up. It is very enlightening. It has to do with free speech.)

Catherine Murphy TD

Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Bill 2015: First Stage Thursday, 28 May 2015

Dáil Éireann Debate Unrevised Page

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