British government lawyers will tomorrow ask the UK Supreme Court to block a public inquiry into the role of state agents in the unsolved murder of Sean Brown in 1997.

Brown was a 61-year-old Catholic father of six with no political or paramilitary links.

He was locking up his local Gaelic football club in south Derry when he was kidnapped and forced into the boot of his own car.

The killers drove him ten miles (past a police station) before shooting him six times in the head.

They then set fire to the car, partially burning Brown’s body. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.

In 2024, a judge at Belfast Coroners’ court ruled that at least 25 people were involved in his abduction and shooting, some of whom are suspected of being serving members of the police or British army at the time.

Others, he said, were “individuals linked through intelligence” to be “agents of the State”.

High Court judge Mr Justice Kinney closed down an inquest at Belfast Coroners’ court saying only a public inquiry would allow a full examination of why important information had been withheld from an original Police Ombudsman probe.

Public inquiries have more powers to investigate deaths than a traditional inquest.

A week later, Kinney wrote to the then Northern Ireland secretary, Conservative Chris Heaton-Harris, asking that a public inquiry be set up within four weeks.

Had the coroner proceeded without sufficient disclosure, the judge said, it “would have resulted in an inquest which was incomplete, inadequate and misleading”.

The campaign for an inquiry is supported by thousands across Ireland, particularly from the Gaelic athletics community, with supporters expected to gather outside the Supreme Court in Westminster from early tomorrow morning.

Brown was a friend of the Nobel poetry prize laureate, Seamus Heaney, for whom he organised a welcome home party after the awards ceremony in Stockholm.

Significantly, Heaney said, the event was attended by people from both sides of the community. “Sean represented,” he said, “something better than we have got used to, something not quite covered by the word ‘reconciliation’ … more like a purification.”

One suspect involved in the murder “is believed to be a serving member of the Royal Irish Regiment”. (Taken from PSNI “Sensitive Folder 1”, partially redacted.)

Cover-up?

Northern Ireland’s police chief constable Jon Boutcher; the Belfast Coroner; the Police Ombudsman; the Irish government; Stormont’s first minister; five High Court judges and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) have all endorsed a public inquiry.

However, six Public Interest Immunity Certificates (so-called “gagging orders”) into the case have been approved by British ministers – five of which were made on behalf of MI5.

Niall Murphy of KRW Law, the family’s solicitor, has asked why MI5 is seeking to hide relevant information.

Ironically, the sixth Public Interest Immunity Certificate is on behalf of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), although its Chief Constable has pledged to help the family “get the answers they deserve”.

Murphy has also slammed the wholesale redactions in two folders of documents the courts ordered be disclosed to him as the family’s solicitor.

A Police Ombudsman’s inquiry upheld the family’s complaint, ruling the original police investigation was inadequate and adding “the disappearance” of key documents was “very significant”.

This, it said, “combined with the investigative failings identified, has led the Police Ombudsman to conclude that an earnest effort to identify the murderers cannot be evidenced”.

Amongst the police failings were:

- Arrests did not take place for six weeks after the murder

- Cigarette butts on flattened grass at the murder scene were not tested against DNA of suspects

- The original murder file was lost

The police have already apologised and paid undisclosed damages . After one court hearing, in an agreed statement between Brown’s family and the PSNI, he was described as a “devoted family man and a pillar of the Bellaghy community”.

The first 56 pages in two folders of documentation received by the family solicitors in 2023/4, after the Coroner in Belfast directed they were relevant, were wholly redacted.

‘Let down’

The main suspect in his murder, Mark “Swinger” Fulton was under surveillance but it was suspended from 5pm on the day of the murder until 9.00am the morning after.

Fulton assumed nominal leadership of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a breakaway from the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), during the imprisonment of its leader, Billy Wright, who “ continued to direct operations from his prison cell ”.

In 1999, two years after the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) shot Wright dead in HMP Maze, Fulton is believed to have ordered the murder of solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, from his prison cell. He was found dead in his cell in the same jail in 2002.

Boutcher, a trenchant opponent of the “Never Confirm, Never Deny” British policy on refusing to identify state agents, said the Brown family had been “let down by the lack of a suitable mechanism to address sensitive information at inquests” and had “a right to answers.”

He has also promised: “Anything we can do to support that family to make sure that they get the answers that they deserve we will do.”

There was widespread criticism when Britain’s then Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, authorised the Supreme Court appeal, which will force Brown’s 89-year-old widow Bridie to travel to London. Benn went ahead, however, and his successor, Chris Bryant, has not altered course.

A Bitter Harvest , by Garbhán Downey, Colmcille Press, has more information

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