Stephen Travers, a survivor of the attack, has said: “I was there when they were murdered by a system that must acknowledge its crime and resolve to change.”
British Army intelligence documents have linked undercover soldier Robert Nairac to the Miami Showband massacre, The Irish News has reported.
On 31 July 1975 , five people were killed, including three members of beloved Irish cabaret band The Miami Showband, on the A1 road at Buskhill in Down.
Three members of the band, including lead singer Fran O’Toole, were killed when loyalist paramilitaries stopped their mini-bus at a fake Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) check point near Banbridge.
Two loyalists also died when the bomb they were planting exploded prematurely.
The newly uncovered documents suggest that Nairac – an undercover British soldier – had obtained equipment and uniforms for the killers. The documents also state that Nairac was involved in the planning and execution of the attack.
The papers were released to a solicitor representing the widow of Miami Showband lead singer Fran O’Toole.
Victims of the attack are suing the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). They say there was collaboration between the killers and serving soldiers.
Nairac was later abducted by the IRA while on an undercover operation in south Armagh in 1977. His body has never been found.
The murder of Fran O’Toole – described as the best soul singer in Ireland – Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy was forever known as ‘the day that music died’ in Ireland during the height of The Troubles.
The attack was perpetrated by two members of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group. However, the crimes go much further.
At the time, the UDR, an infantry regiment of the British Army, was infiltrated by members of the UVF.
The incident was depicted in a Netflix documentary and Stephen Travers – a member of the Miami Showband that survived the attack – has consistently stated his belief that the bomb was planted in the band’s car because the Crown wanted to seal the Irish border.
By planting a bomb in their car as they travelled home to Dublin, Travers believes the Crown wanted to discredit the band and frame them as terrorists that were working in conjunction with the IRA.
As the documentary notes, when Travers was researching the murders, he obtained documents released by the relevant authorities.
He also acquired a statement from the UVF, declaring that MI5 had tasked them with assassinating Charles Haughey.
During the documentary, former Intelligence Corps agent Captain Fred Holroyd stated that the Miami Showband Massacre was organised by British intelligence officer Robert Nairac, together with the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade and its commander, Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson.
In 2011, a report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) raised collusion concerns around the involvement of an alleged RUC Special Branch agent.
It found that now-dead UVF commander and suspected police mole Jackson had been connected to one of the murder weapons by fingerprint analysis.
Two UDR soldiers were convicted for their roles in the attack.
These new British army documents have now linked Nairac to the atrocity. Survivors of the attack, including justice campaigner Stephen Travers, have consistently said that a member of the gang that planted the bomb spoke with an English accent.
After these documents were uncovered by the Irish Post, Mr Travers took to Twitter to say:
“When I first saw it, I must have read each line at least 10 times – desperately searching for some reason to be sceptical, but the stark reality of his name on the page before me was both dreadfully sad and, at the same time, tremendously exciting.”
He added:
“When it awarded him (Nairac) The George Cross, was Buckingham Palace aware that Captain Robert Nairac was named, in an official Ministry of Defence document, as having been ‘involved in the planning and execution of The Miami Showband murders’ or was the palace misled by the government?”
Regardless of the evidence that will soon be presented in The High Court, all three bodies of "The Disappeared" should be returned to their families for burial and I urge those with information to contact the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.
— Stephen Travers (@MiamiShowband) January 16, 2020
Mr Travers has also asked for Nairac’s body – and all three bodies of “The Disappeared” – to be returned to their families for burial and noted that he has “no wish to cause grief to his (Nairac’s) family, who are in no way responsible for his alleged actions, but my loyalty to Tony, Fran and Brian is paramount.
“I was there when they were murdered by a system that must acknowledge its crime and resolve to change.”
On Friday afternoon, a high court judge criticised the police for not disclosing documents in an alleged collusion case about the Miami Showband murders in 1975, as reported by the BBC.
https://twitter.com/MiamiShowband/status/1220606136216440838
I fully understand Doug. I have no wish to cause grief to his family, who are in no way responsible for his alleged actions, but my loyalty to Tony, Fran and Brian is paramount. I was there when they were murdered by a system that must acknowledge its crime and resolve to change.
— Stephen Travers (@MiamiShowband) January 24, 2020
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
