Belfast solicitor Padraig O Muirigh: “We’re only at the start of what’s going to happen.”
The New York City Bar Association has joined those publicly worried about the intimidation of lawyers in Northern Ireland. In a July 11 letter to British Prime Minister Theresa May and Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, the association outlines “a series of concerns surrounding the recent climate of intimidation that has been reemerging for lawyers in Northern Ireland.”
NYC Bar Association President John S. Kiernan wrote: “It is particularly disquieting that [U.K.] government officials appear to have contributed to this climate of intimidation, both by failing to adequately intervene in response to these threats and by engaging in their own attacks on lawyers.”
As outlined in last month’s Human Rights First report, some lawyers in Northern Ireland fear that a climate being encouraged in the UK press and parliament against them might lead to physical attacks.
In 1989 and then in 1999, following similar rhetoric in Britain’s parliament and press to what’s being voiced now, two human rights lawyers - Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson - were murdered.
The latest smears began in earnest in October last year, when in a speech to the Conservative Party Conference, British Prime Minister Theresa May promised to “never again... let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave – the men and women of Britain’s Armed Forces.”
The UK government fears that former British soldiers will be charged with some of the hundreds of killings that took place from the late 1960s and which are now liable to new investigations.
These “legacy cases” threaten too to expose details of British government collusion in killings by paramilitaries, and of the role played by some of its informers. Solicitors representing families of victims have been named in the UK press as “Tank Chase Lawyers,” their photographs printed, details of their homes and offices published, their work repeatedly described in the media as a “witch hunt” of British soldiers.
The online comments posted after a December 10 article in The Sun newspaper included one stating “Soldiers should have immunity from this kind of thing. These parasite lawyers need shooting along with the scum they’re representing.”
Some lawyers think the threats are likely to get worse as the legacy cases progress and more former members of the military are charged.
“I think we’re only at the start of what’s going to happen, we’re only at the early stages of former British soldiers being brought in for questioning, but it is likely that we will be targeted by the right wing media for the next five to ten years. We’ll see as many of legacy cases progress through the current legal mechanisms or any new institutions agreed by politicians to resolve legacy issues in the north of Ireland,” solicitor Padraig O Muirigh told me in his west Belfast office. “If the right wing media and politicians attack the work of human rights lawyers you make us easier targets for loyalist paramilitaries, as we have seen in the past’.
He represents a range of clients including those from Republican and Loyalist communities, and is worried where the rhetoric will lead.
“Given the history of Rosemary and Pat you have to nip this in the bud,” he said. O Muirigh is 40, and remembers the murdered lawyers as inspirational figures to himself and to others. O Muirigh’s father is a high-profile Republican who knew Pat Finucane and chatted with him regularly. “I recall one of those occasions when I was present. It wasn’t long before Pat was killed. I would have been 12 years old. My grandmother admired Pat - he had represented an uncle of mine. She had encouraged me to study law and to use the law as a ‘tool’ to help my community, just as Pat had done.”
Mural in West Belfast commemorates murdered lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson.
O Muirigh also told me of meeting Rosemary Nelson a few weeks before she died, around the time she testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Congressional SubCommittee on International Operations and Human Rights describing her “difficulties” with Northern Ireland police, which included their “making allegations that I am a member of a paramilitary group and, at their most serious, making threats against my personal safety, including death threats”.
Nelson was O Muirigh’s lawyer when he was a student, he says. “I was arrested during a protest - a pretty clear case of wrongful arrest. She helped me, won my case for compensation, and encouraged me to study law. I’d talked to her about the threats to her not long before she was killed.”
Twenty years ago, when Human Rights First was called The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, it issued a report calling on the British Government to “require vigorous and independent investigation of all threats to legal counsel in Northern Ireland. Solicitors who report threats of violence should be accorded effective protection.” That should happen now, and British officials should stop encouraging a climate that can lead to attacks on lawyers.
As the NYC Bar Association letter to May and Borokenshire says, “We urge you and other government officials to refrain from the use of inflammatory rhetoric against lawyers involved in the reconciliation process and to identify and implement steps to support lawyers working on reconciliation and legacy issues, and to publicly commit to safeguarding lawyers who have been harassed or threatened as a result of performing their professional duties.”