Tony Blair bid to avoid IRA letters questions is 'insult' to victims

Tony Blair's attempts to avoid being grilled over IRA comfort letters is a “disgusting insult” to victims of terrorists, the father of one has said.

The former Prime Minister will finally give evidence on Tuesday before a parliamentary committee investigating the controversial scheme after nine months of dragging his feet.

He will be questioned over his role in the sending of more than 200 letters of assurance to IRA suspects still on-the-run telling them they were no longer wanted by the police.

Mr Blair initially told the Northern Ireland select committee that he was too busy as the UN envoy to the Middle East to attend and that he had nothing new to say.

He is only now appearing, nine months after first being asked, because the committee issued a parliamentary summons for him to attend.

Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden died in the 1998 Omagh bombing by the Real IRA, said: “We have been insulted and disgusted by the manner in which the former Prime Minister has treated the committee and dragged his feet over this.

“I think it sends out a strong message that he is very ashamed of some of the things that were done during his time in office...

...The letters scheme was set up in the years after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland.

It was designed to deal with IRA suspects still on-the-run and therefore not able to benefit from the effective amnesty and early release scheme granted to imprisoned terrorists as a result of the peace deal.

Mr Blair took a central role in the scheme and made personal pledges to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to deal with the issue before he left office.

The full scale of the programme only emerged last year following the collapsed prosecution of John Downey, a suspect in the 1982 IRA bombing in Hyde Park, which left four soldiers dead.

His case was thrown out after it emerged he had been sent a letter...

...Although Mr Blair gave evidence in private to an investigation led by Lady Justice Hallett, which reported last year, he resisted attempts to appear in public before the Northern Ireland committee.

It was claimed last week that even after receiving a parliamentary summons he rang John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, to see if he had to appear.

He finally agreed to attend but will only be questioned for an hour.
Laurence Robertson, chairman of the committee, said: “We only have an hour so we need to look forward.

“It has been frustrating. He needs to explain what was going on and why was it so important.

“Why was it necessary to run this privately and did he think the people being sent letters were completely innocent or was there some doubt about them?

“People have been hurt by the fact it was all kept secret.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11340728/Tony-Blair-bid-to-avoid-IRA-letters-questions-...

...The letters from the Police Service of Northern Ireland sparked uproar last year when it resulted in the collapse of the Hyde Park bomb trial at the Old Bailey.

John Downey, who denied murdering four soldiers in the 1982 bombing, had received a letter in error informing him he was no longer being pursued in Northern Ireland or elsewhere.

During his trial, it emerged that 187 people had received similar assurances - the majority of them republicans who had never been charged or who had been convicted but then escaped.

Mr Blair said the Downey letter...should not have been sent "if the scheme had been properly applied".

He accepted responsibility for not putting in place a proper procedure...

However, he said he would not apologise for the letters sent to those wanted terrorist suspects who it was concluded by the authorities at the time should have received them.

Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, those convicted of terrorist offences were released from prison early...

In 2006, after an attempt to establish a formal scheme for "on the runs" failed, Mr Blair wrote to Gerry Adams outlining plans to resolve the issue, "expediting the existing administrative procedures".

...victims' families said they felt "devastatingly let down" by the collapse of the Downey case - and Northern Ireland's First Minister threatened to resign.

MPs questioned Mr Blair's claim that had he not made the agreement "over on the runs" the peace process would have collapsed saying that Lord Mandelson, a former Northern Ireland Secretary, had told the committee the Good Friday Agreement was not at stake.

news.sky.com/story/1406728/blair-sorry-over-ira-fugitive-letter-blunder

After 30 years as a closet Catholic, Blair finally puts faith before politics

His spiritual awakening goes back at least 30 years, to his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, but due to political considerations Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism has been a long time coming.

He has been attending Catholic mass, often with his family but also occasionally alone, since long before he became prime minister. His wife, Cherie, is a lifelong and practising Catholic, and in accordance with church rules their children have been brought up as Catholics and were sent to church schools.

More than 10 years ago Mr Blair was slipping into Westminster cathedral and occasionally taking communion...

...Since then he has regularly attended services conducted by Canon Timothy Russ, parish priest of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at Great Missenden, the nearest Catholic church to Chequers.

He is also known to have had discussions with priests such as Father Timothy Radcliffe, former head of the worldwide Dominican order, now at Oxford, and with Father Michael Seed, who has shephered a number of high-profile figures, including Ann Widdecome and, allegedly, Alan Clark, towards conversion. Fr Seed, an engaging if indiscreet figure, has claimed to have paid regular backdoor visits to Downing Street to talk religion, if not necessarily to advise the prime minister.

So why has it taken so long? Almost certainly because of Mr Blair's sensitivity about the place of Catholicism in British public - and particularly its constitutional - life. The only positions specifically barred to Catholics are marriage to the sovereign or heir to the throne, or becoming sovereign themselves, a legacy of the Act of Settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the deposition of the last Catholic monarch, James II; there has never been a Catholic prime minister...

...the motives of Catholic politicians have traditionally been regarded with suspicion by non-Catholics, both here and in the US, based on the allegation that they take their orders from the Vatican rather than the electorate. Catholic political leaders have always denied it - but the recent antics of some bishops in the US during the 2004 presidential campaign when they threatened to deny John Kerry communion because of his support for abortion rights and, recently, Cardinal Keith O'Brien's warning that he would do the same in Scotland, have tended to confirm old suspicions.

A number of potentially divisive moral issues would have been much more difficult if Mr Blair had been known to be a Catholic, even though his personal beliefs have not necessarily intruded into the government's decisions...

...He has been keen to expand the number of faith schools and church-supported academies, in the face of strong opposition from secular groups...

...The criticism of Ruth Kelly when she was education secretary because of her membership of the lay sect Opus Dei - at a time when the novel The Da Vinci Code had made the group more widely known - also showed that the old prejudice could still be deployed. Mr Blair probably thought he could do without the extra hassle.

He has kept his personal religious views largely out of his political life. Ostentatious religiosity does not go down well in Britain. He dropped his wish to end a prime ministerial broadcast on the eve of the Iraq invasion with the words: "God bless" on the advice of Alastair Campbell, who famously told him "We don't do God".

Converting to Catholicism is not a straightforward or easy process, as Tony Blair will have realised. It takes time - though how long depends on the candidate's readiness and aptitude - and is based on the church's assessment of their sincerity and commitment. The process is described in a 44-page document called the Rite of Christian Initiation...

www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jun/22/uk.religion1