“One of the most frustrating things is when your own government just turns its back on you.”
Despite the fact that it was released in 2017, this week saw RTÉ becoming the first TV station to broadcast Alex Gibney’s Emmy Award-nominated documentary No Stone Unturned.
As previously discussed, the documentary depicts the horrific massacre that took place on June 18, 1994, in the small village of Loughinisland, Down.
Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, burst into a pub with assault rifles and fired on the customers. Six civilians were killed, five others were wounded.
The documentary names the chief suspects involved in the massacre and examines the roll that the British state had in colluding with the loyalist paramilitaries that carried out the atrocity.
The filmmakers allege that it was the wife of one of the suspects who tipped off the police, a politician, and a journalist to the identity of the Loughinisland killers.
One of the suspects was brought in for interrogation.
However, a former Royal Ulster Constabulary officer stated that the majority of this interrogation was spent in an attempt to convince this suspect to kill a leading Republican.
The film also alleges that the RUC Special Branch had prior knowledge of the attack taking place and that the gang, which included at least one informer, went on to carry out other attacks too.
For the first time, the film publicly names the chief suspect in the killing.
After the massacre occurred, the RUC vowed to catch the killers. Queen Elizabeth also sent letters of sympathy to the families, and the Secretary of State, Patrick Mayhew, visited County Down.
At the time, he told reporters that the authorities would leave “no stone unturned”.
Nobody has ever been arrested for the murders.
The documentary was thrust into the spotlight again in August 2018 when two investigative journalists who worked on the film, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, were detained over the suspected theft of confidential documents relating to the killings.
In May of this year, three appeal judges at the High Court in Belfast quashed warrants for the arrest of Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey, arising from their work on the documentary.
During a recent interview with Ray D’arcy, Alex Gibney was asked about his decision to name the chief suspect of the killings and if he was ever concerned for his own safety.
“There’s always a concern but at the end of the day, we took great precaution both to inform the police to warn them we were about to do this and reach out to those individuals themselves and give them an opportunity to respond. Sometimes, sunlight is the best disinfectant and sunlight can be a pretty good protection too,” he said.
Gibney also said that a large reason why he named the chief suspects is because the families of the victims deserve to know if the murderer is dwelling among them.
“I think a more chilling thought – and it’s expressed by the Rogans in the film – is to imagine them going to the supermarket and not knowing that person next to them in the vegetable section might have been responsible for the murder of their loved ones. I think to some our decision to name them was in some ways a public safety issue and an attempt to try to force the police to reckon with this massacre, this unsolved mystery – according to them,” he added.
The Oscar-winning director also hopes that his decision to name the suspects can provide some closure for the families of those killed.
“I think they’ve got a lot of answers and that’s given them some comfort. I should say the hard part of going back into the past is that when some questions are answered other new questions remain unanswered. You find new ones to ask. They still haven’t got any justice and no sign that the PSNI are even investigating anymore. I think that may be one of the most frustrating things when your own government just turns its back on you.”
Gibney also discussed the recent arrest of the journalists that worked on the film by the PSNI.
“We found pretty convincing evidence of who the suspects were but the only investigating seemingly the PSNI have done is into the filmmakers themselves. Two of my producers, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, were arrested by 100 police all bearing weapons very early one morning in front of their kids… and then they were taken to the police station and the idea was that they were briefly being accused of stealing government documents.
“That’s not true. Documents were leaked to us as part of the investigating process but ultimately that warrant was thrown out by a judge. But it was a long time that arrest and prison hung over the heads of Trevor and Barry and to some extent myself for trying to investigate what the police should have investigated.”
No Stone Unturned is now available to watch on the RTÉ Player.
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