The UN has been called on to establish an investigation into the State’s role in the “detention, interrogation, torture and prosecution” of five men subsequent to the 1976 Sallins mail train robbery. A petition, in excess of 100 pages, was presented last week to the UN Committee against Torture by international legal firm KRW Law which claimed “current and ongoing violations” against Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly, Brian McNally, John Fitzpatrick and Michael Barrett.
It claims that the “degrading treatment and punishment” of the five men was due to refusal by the Irish government to comply with its obligations under the UN Convention against Torture in 2002 and the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT) in 2007.
The mail train robbery took place on March 31st, 1976 when the Cork-to-Dublin train was robbed near Sallins in Co Kildare and an estimated £200,000 was stolen. Five members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly, Mick Plunkett, John Fitzpatrick, Michael Barrett and ex-member Brian McNally, were arrested.
Following interrogation by gardaí all, except Michael Plunkett, signed confessions and appeared in court subsequently with extensive bruising and injuries they claimed were inflicted by gardaí.
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Eventually, and based on their alleged confessions, Osgur Breatnach, Brian McNally, and Nicky Kelly were sentenced to between nine and 12 years’ imprisonment, by which time Nicky Kelly had absconded. In 1980 Breatnach and McNally were released on appeal as it was found their confessions were made under duress and oppression. That same year the Provisional IRA claimed responsibility for the Sallins robbery.
Nicky Kelly then returned from the US, expecting to be acquitted. Instead, he was jailed in Portlaoise prison and spent four years proclaiming his innocence, including a 38-day hunger strike, before being released on “humanitarian grounds” in 1984. There has never been an inquiry into the miscarriage of justice where all five men are concerned.
Kevin Winters of KRW Law said: “Osgur Breatnach, Brian McNally, Nicky Kelly, John Fitzpatrick and Michael Barrett are now elderly and vulnerable. Their lives have been irrevocably changed by what happened to them following their wrongful arrests and prosecutions for the Sallins train robbery 1976.”
They had “suffered and continue to suffer both psychological and physiological damage. The Irish State has systematically failed to address their treatment and the failure of the systems which enabled this treatment to occur.” Government’s obligations (under the UN Convention against Torture) “obligates them to end this ill-treatment by holding an independent public inquiry”, he said.
Among NGOs and human rights organisations supporting the petition are Amnesty International, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Pat Finucane Centre, the Committee for the Administration of Justice, as well as singer Christy Moore, Council of State member Michael Farrell, president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe James McGill, former High Court judge Pat McCartan, former UN representative and receiver of the Gandhi International Peace Award Denis J Halliday, as well as all 14 “hooded men” who the UK Supreme Court last December acknowledged had been tortured in Northern Ireland 50 years beforehand, in 1971. The Irish Government supported the hooded men‘s campaign.
KRW Law represented some of the hooded men in that campaign.
