Emotional day for Ormeau Road families as report finds police and loyalist 'collusive behaviours'
The families of those murdered at Sean Graham bookmakers in Belfast in 1992 say they feel emotional following the release of a report by the Police Ombudsman.
The report, published on Tuesday, identified evidence of "collusive behaviours" by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in relation to a series of loyalist murders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Eight loyalist attacks attributed to the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) or its Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) cover name in south Belfast in the 1990s were examined in the report.
Eleven people were murdered in the attacks, including the five who lost their lives in the Sean Graham bookmakers atrocity on the Ormeau Road in February 1992.
Mark Thompson from Relatives for Justice said it has been a difficult time for victims' families getting to grips with the report.
“Today is an emotional day," he continued.
“It’s been a difficult couple of days for families and survivors in terms of getting to grips with the report and reading the damning report and the egregious nature of it."
Bosco Kennedy, whose 15-year-old brother James was the youngest victim of the bookmakers atrocity, said "today is all about the families and the victims".
"We've been waiting over 30 years for this report," he said.
"From a personal point of view, the simple facts that I take from this report is the loyalist murderers who carried out the Sean Graham bookmakers atrocity were police informants and one of the guns used to murder my 15-year-old brother was given to the UDA by the RUC police handlers.
"Today we get the truth but we still want justice."
The ombudsman, Marie Anderson, said she was "deeply concerned" by the scale and scope of the failings she uncovered in her investigation.
Among her damning findings, Mrs Anderson said Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) files relating to the bookmakers massacre had been deliberately destroyed.
The ombudsman also described as "totally unacceptable" the use by RUC Special Branch of informants who had themselves been involved in murders.
As well as raising concerns about the use of informants in relation to the cases under investigation in her report, the ombudsman commented on the wider Special Branch policy of employing informers that had been involved in murder.
She said the findings of the new probe, when combined with the conclusions of other reports published by her office in the past, had identified a total of eight UDA/UFF informants who were linked, through intelligence, to the murders and attempted murders of 27 people.
While she found no evidence that police had received information that would have allowed them to prevent any of the attacks examined in the latest report, the ombudsman questioned why no such intelligence was received, given that Special Branch had such a network of informants within the UDA/UFF.
A senior PSNI officer said that areas of the report made "uncomfortable reading" and apologised to the families of those killed and injured for the failings identified.