NI: N Ireland: Documents confirm collusion (feature)
01 March 1998
Documents confirm collusion
Secret records of meetings between a British Army military intelligence unit and agent Brian Nelson reveal British Army complicity in murders carried out by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association between 1987 and 1990. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph (29.3.98), BBC journalist John Ware quotes from the records which provide the strongest evidence to date that the British Army's Force Research Unit practised "assassination by proxy", assisting the UDA with intelligence to such an extent that UDA assassinations would, as a consequence, be made on the basis of what the Army considered to be proper targeting. While strong circumstantial evidence of collusion has existed since the early 1970s, the "contact records" referred to by Ware provide positive written corroboration. The documents also confirm the real name of FRU, previously thought to stand for Field Research Unit or Future Research Unit.
Brian Nelson's military career is well-known to Statewatch readers (vol 2 no 2, vol 2 no 5, vol 3 no 2, vol 3 no 4, vol 4 no 3,). He started off in the Black Watch regiment at the age of 17, moved to the UDA in the early 1970s and received a seven year prison sentence in 1974 for the kidnap and torture of a partially sighted Catholic. On release from prison, he returned to the UDA, later offering his services to military intelligence. Nelson left Northern Ireland in the mid-1980s but was invited back by the commanding officer of the Force Research Unit in 1987. Nelson agreed to re-join the UDA and, with the assistance of his British Army handlers, quickly rose to the position of head of intelligence for the UDA. Ware claims that Nelson was paid ?28,000 a year as a British Army agent. Former Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland, Kevin McNamara, has tabled a series of parliamentary questions about Nelson and FRU, including, what was the exchequer cost of FRU's financial arrangements with Nelson. Another of McNamara's questions asks for the number of officers and soldiers attached to FRU and the annual cost of a) the Force Research Unit and b) its replacement in each year of their operation. New Labour's open government does not quite extend this far, however. In every case the answer has been the same: "I (Dr. Reid) am withholding this information under exemption 1 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information".
A number of security force killings in the early 1980s had led to allegations of a "shoot-to-kill" policy and to the thwarted Stalker inquiry. In these circumstances, some commentators believe, military intelligence renewed its interest in the tried and tested strategy of using unofficial forces - referred to in Army manuals as "pseudo gangs" - to undermine the common enemy. In the early 1970s, the unit responsible for such a strategy was called the Military Reaction Force. By the late 1980s, it was the turn of the Force Research Unit. MI5 has also been linked to the strategy because it had full knowledge of Nelson's arms-shopping trip to South Africa which resulted in a substantial weapons shipment being delivered to loyalist groups in January 1988.
The records of the FRU/Nelson meetings show how the Army put their well-placed agent to use. The aim was to provide the UDA with profiles of IRA suspects so that the loyalist "kill all Catholics" policy would be replaced by the targeting of "known players". One document, dated 3 May 1988, records that under FRU/Nelson influence, "targeting has developed, and is now more professional". On 4 August that year it was noted that Nelson's "appointment enables him to make sure that sectarian killings are not carried out, but that proper targeting of Provisional IRA members takes place prior to any shooting".
It was exactly this boast which the UDA made after shooting Loughlin Maginn a year later in the summer of 1989, backing up the claim by publishing an official intelligence file which identified Maginn as an IRA<