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NI: Open justice?

01 July 1994

In a judgment in relation to the issue of public interest immunity certificates (pii) by secretary of state for defence Malcolm Rifkind to protect soldiers from giving oral evidence, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal rebuked Leckey for not taking the minister's pii certificate sufficiently seriously. The ministry was shocked when, in the inquest of three men killed by a special unit, the 14th Intelligence company (tasked like the RUC's E4A with person to person undercover surveillance), during a robbery of a betting shop in Belfast, Leckey refused to follow the normal practice of allowing soldier witnesses to give evidence by statement rather than having to appear. He also refused to let them give their evidence behind screens. In ruling against the coroner, Lord Chief Justice Hutton accepted that open justice was a very important public interest, and that the operations of three or four undercover soldiers came very low down in the national security stakes, but took Leckey to task for "undervalu[ing] the importance of the Certificate setting out the views of a Minister of the Crown". The court directed him to reconsider the MoD requests to screen the officers and to limit their evidence.

In the matter of inquests touching the deaths of John McNeill, Edward Hale and Peter Thompson R v Coroner for Greater Belfast ex p Ministry of Defence June 1994.