Madam, – In the aftermath of the publication of the Saville report on Bloody Sunday, I was pleased to note that the sky did not fall in. Instead something stranger happened - the truth won out. The perpetrators of the crime, the British government, came clean and apologised. Even though the world and his wife knew that the people shot that day were entirely innocent, it is very important for the victims’ families and survivors to have a formal recognition of that fact to allow for healing.
In relation to the Arms Trial of 1970 the Irish government should follow the British example and come clean. In 1970 the Irish government charged four men for the illegal importation of arms, one of them being my father, Captain James J Kelly.
Despite acting under Irish Army orders and the full knowledge of the minister of defence at the time, my father became the fall guy due to a change of government policy and was sent to trial. My father simply told the truth, and much to the angst of the powers that be, was acquitted of all charges. The decision of the court was not accepted by the government and for the next 30 years he was treated as a subversive, he endured heavy-handed surveillence, phone-tapping, death threats, unemployment and was generally treated as a persona non grata in his own country.
On the morning of his funeral, the family received a statement from the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern which was so vacuous that a coach and horses could be driven through it – after all the man was safely dead.
I call on the present Government in clear terms to apologise for its actions and state publicly for the record that my father was a loyal honourable soldier and should never have been charged with an illegality in the first instance. – Yours, etc,