Why Jerry McCabe's killers should walk free There are moral as well as political reasons for releasing the killers of Jerry McCabe, writes Fintan O'Toole
From IRISH TIMES August 5th, 2000
Jerry McCabe and his Garda colleague Ben O'Sullivan were sitting in an unmarked
Ford Mondeo in the village of Adare, Co Limerick, on June 7th, 1996 when
their car was suddenly rammed from behind by a Pajero jeep. Three men in
dark balaclavas and black-and-green army camouflage jumped out of the Pajero,
and started to fire into the Garda car. The men seemed utterly determined
to kill both of the detectives. One ran to the driver's side and poured
bullets from his Kalashnikov automatic rifle at Ben O'Sullivan. Another
ran to the passenger side and shot Jerry McCabe three times, killing him
almost instantly. In all, the gunmen fired at least 14 shots. They gave
no warning and showed no mercy. They didn't even pause to grab the money
from the post office van that the two detectives were guarding, but sped
away at once. If it was possible to make these actions worse, what happened
in the run-up to the trial of the killers in January 1999 added insult to
the rule of law to the terrible injury to the McCabe and O'Sullivan families.
The IRA effectively managed to force the prosecution to accept a plea of
manslaughter rather than murder from the accused by striking fear into the
hearts of key witnesses. One man who testified that one of the accused was
similar to a man he had seen in Adare on the day of the shooting said he
had been "intimidated and threatened". Another key witness accepted an 18-month
prison sentence for contempt of court rather than give his evidence. According
to his solicitor, he was put under pressure which led him to fear for his
life. In the light of all of this, it is very hard to stomach the notion
that the men who killed Jerry McCabe and tried to kill Ben O'Sullivan should
now walk free under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, as Sinn Fein
has been demanding. For the families involved, for the Garda Siochana, for
the State and for the vast majority of the Irish public, such a prospect
is quite sickening. It would seem to make a mockery of the most basic principles
of morality, justice and law-bound democracy. And yet, Jerry McCabe's killers
should be released now, not just for pragmatic political reasons but for
good moral reasons as well. Justice isn't only about retribution. It is
also about consistency. To treat those who are guilty of similar crimes
in fundamentally different ways is unjust. To demand that others bear burdens
we ourselves regard as unbearable is immoral. If some of the people who
were released from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland last week are to
escape the full retribution for their actions, then so must the killers
of Jerry McCabe. If the Republic is to demand - as it does - that people
in Northern Ireland must stomach the release of vicious killers for the
sake of the Belfast Agreement, it must be willing to swallow the same bitter
pill. The awful reality is that there was nothing unique about the cold-blooded
cruelty of Jerry McCabe's killers. The IRA, no more than the UDA/UFF, the
UVF or the INLA, was not in the business of compassion and mercy. The work
of the terror gangs was murder and maiming and everyone who supported the
Belfast Agreement knew that part of its price was the release of people
who, almost by definition, had behaved savagely. One of the UFF men who
walked into the Rising Sun bar and restaurant in Greysteel in October 1993
wearing similar gear and carrying similar guns to the balaclavas, fatigues
and Kalashnikovs of Jerry McCabe's killers and murdered seven innocent people
openly laughed at the relatives of the dead on his way in to his trial.
But those men have been released under the agreement. The man who helped
to beat 16-year-old James Morgan to death with a hammer in July 1997 and
dump his partially burned body in a pit used to dispose of dead farm animals
has been released. So has the man convicted of assisting with the murder
of postal worker Frank Kerr in Newry in November 1994, when the IRA was
supposedly on ceasefire. So have the men who beat and kicked to death Constable
Gregory Taylor as he emerged from a bar in Ballymoney in June 1997. So have
dozens of other men guilty of unspeakable crimes, some of whom have shown
not the slightest sign of remorse. Yet the families of many of the victims
of these awful crimes voted for the Belfast Agreement in the full knowledge
of what it meant for the killers of their loved ones. James Morgan's father
expressed the feelings of many of them when he said "It wasn't easy. I had mixed feelings about it, but we voted yes. Whether his murderers are in and out of prison, it won't bring James back. At least if it stopped this sort of thing, it would be worth it." If people who have suffered such unimaginable pain can come to a rational decision to sacrifice the right of retribution to the demands of peace, then so can the Republic as a whole. |
