McCord positive about US hearing Raymond McCord has said he could not have hoped for anything better from the Congressional hearing in the United States into his son's killing.   UTV.Friday, 23 October 2009 The Belfast man spoke out after giving evidence as the main witness to the hearing into the murder of 22-year-old Raymond McCord Jr near Belfast in 1997. He was killed by the UVF and his father has since led a lengthy campaign to expose police collusion in the case, between British Government agents and police informers. Article Continues Speaking from Capitol Hill, Mr McCord expressed deep satisfaction with the hearing. "Congressman Delahunt, the Chairman of the Hearing, and the other Members of Congress could not have been more supportive," he said. "It has given me great consolation and encouragement. The congress of the United States has assured me they are not going to quit until I get justice for Raymond, and, needless to say, neither am I." Mr McCord also expressed his thanks to Fr. Sean Mc Manus, president of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus. "I am deeply grateful to Fr. Mc Manus for helping to make it possible," he said. McCord seeks justice at congress hearing  By Barry McCaffrey Irish News. Friday, October 23, 2009 THE father of a UVF murder victim has told members of the United States congress that they are his last hope to achieving justice for his son. Raymond McCord snr was speaking yesterday at a special hearing of the US congress to investigate the involvement of Special Branch agents in the murder of his son. Raymond McCord jnr was beaten to death by members of the Mount Vernon UVF at a quarry in Newtownabbey in November 1997. In 2007 then police ombudsman Nuala O�Loan found that members of Mount Vernon UVF were protected from prosecution in more than a dozen murders because they were working as Special Branch agents. Contrasting the support he had received in America with the support of unionist parties in Northern Ireland, Mr McCord said: �I cannot help but be struck by the difference between the way I have been treated by members of congress and the way unionist/Protestant politicians have treated me. In 2008, when there was a vote taken in the Northern Ireland Assembly on my son�s case, a majority of the unionist politicians walked out. �You can therefore see just how much your support means to me. �I look to the United States congress as my last hope of getting justice for my son Raymond jnr.�� Accusing the British government and the PSNI of blocking his attempts to bring his son�s killers to justice, he said: �Why has no one been charged with Raymond�s murder? Why was [police informer and UVF leader Mark] Haddock allowed to kill for so long and get paid for it? Why no action against present or former RUC/PSNI officers who refused to be interviewed or to cooperate with the ombudsman�s investigation?�� He also highlighted the fact that his son�s killers were paid tens of thousands of pounds while working as Special Branch agents. �It is not about the corruption of a few bad apples,� he said. �What does it do to Northern Ireland society when the government pays serial killers?�� A son of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane told the hearing that his family wanted to know why he was murdered. �I want to know who was responsible. I want to know why no-one warned him he was in danger. I want to know why he wasn�t protected. I want to know who covered it up,� John Finucane said. �If the British government is serious about resolving the situation in Northern Ireland for good and building a lasting peace, then all we ask is this one simple thing. �They cannot give me back my father � the least they can do is tell me the truth.�� Relatives For Justice director Mark Thompson said that the issue of collusion remained an �open sore� with victims� families. �The question is not only why these people were protected but also why their handlers have never been brought to justice,� he said. ********** Murdered Belfast man's father lobbies in Washington Irish Times. Friday, October 22, 2009 NIALL STANAGE in New York THE FATHER of a Belfast man murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1997 took his campaign to bring the killers to justice to Capitol Hill yesterday. Raymond McCord (55) told a House of Representatives subcommittee that he believed there was collusion between the security forces and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the killing of his son, Raymond Jr. Mr McCord alleges that a leading loyalist, who is said to have worked as an informer for the RUC�s Special Branch during the Troubles, ordered the killing. Mr McCord has consistently demanded to know why no one has been charged with the murder of his son. In his testimony to the House Subcommittee on International Organisations, Human Rights and Oversight, he claimed: �The British government � my government � and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) � my police � have blocked and stonewalled me. They have colluded and are still colluding with the killers of my son and many other victims.� The PSNI press office said they had no statement to make on Mr McCord�s testimony. Mr McCord expressed the hope that �the US Congress will hear my voice and take up my cause�. After the hearing, he said: �It�s imperative that pressure is put on the British government, when they are trying to sweep this under the carpet.� He added that he was very happy with how his testimony had been received. �The members gave me a lot of confidence in the way they spoke,� he said. Fr Seán McManus, the president of the US-based Irish National Caucus and a key supporter of Mr McCord, said Democratic congressman Richie Neal would send a letter to British prime minister Gordon Brown asking him to meet Mr McCord. Mr Neal had committed to asking his fellow members of Congress to co-sign the letter, Fr McManus added. Among the subcommittee�s members are Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican who made a quixotic bid for his party�s presidential nomination last year, and Congressman Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat who has long displayed a high level of interest in the North. At the opening of the hearing, Mr Payne said, �We are not here today to reopen old wounds but rather to support Raymond McCord in his search for justice.� Finding out the truth about the killing, he said, was �an important step towards moving forward.� Mr McCord�s son was beaten to death in Newtownabbey, north of Belfast. Mr McCord, a Protestant, has been increasingly vocal about the lack of support he feels he has received from unionist politicians. �Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, and Mark Durkan, SDLP leader, were the only two political leaders who helped,� his written testimony to the subcommittee stated. �The Unionist politicians were in denial, refusing to admit collusion, and they simply wanted me to go away.� Fr McManus asserted that Mr McCord was the first Northern Protestant to testify before the US Congress in support of collusion allegations. *************** McCord testimony won't be the last on Capitol Hill The Congress in Washington is playing an increasingly significant role in Northern Ireland�s truth-telling process, writes US Correspondent Jim Dee Belfast Telegraph. Friday, 23 October 2009 When Raymond McCord appeared before a US House of Representatives sub-committee yesterday he became the latest of many Northern Ireland people whose Capitol Hill testimony has highlighted the reach and the limits of Congressional influence in the province�s affairs.. Although members like the late Senator Edward Kennedy were initially critical of Britain through the years, most Capitol Hill pronouncements have tended toward moderation. Ironically, the Congress member who first took the most active interest in the conflict was New York�s Mario Biaggi � an Italian-American whose constituency was light of Irish-American voters. As the story goes, Biaggi�s long-held casual interest hit overdrive in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday when his daughter travelled to Londonderry to probe on-the-ground |realities after the killings. By 1977, Biaggi had set up the Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs in the US House of Representatives and he began pushing for official Congressional hearings into allegations that RUC interrogators were torturing IRA suspects. Two years later, on the basis of those allegations, Congressman Biaggi was instrumental in getting the US State Department to place embargo on US small arms supplies to the RUC. However, Biaggi�s quest for a full Congressional probe into alleged human rights abuses committed by the security forces was thwarted by the legendary Speaker of the House Tip O�Neil. O�Neil, a Massachusetts Democrat, had been told by Irish government officials in Washington that such a hearing would be a huge propaganda coup for the IRA, so he steadfastly blocked Biaggi�s efforts for the remainder of the 1980s. Fast-forward to the early 1990s and, with the peace process gathering steam, Capitol Hill�s interest grew accordingly � particularly after the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994 and the forging of the Good Friday Agreement. Activists who�d tried for decades to peak Congressional interest in issues such as collusion or human rights abuses found more on Capitol Hill willing to act. For example, in 1999, Congress passed legislation requiring RUC members that were due to participate in FBI training exercises to be screened for past human rights abuses in Northern Ireland (a requirement later lifted by George W Bush in 2001). During the past decade there have been several Congressional hearings on the peace process, human rights, and collusion. During once proceeding � held six months before she was killed in a car-bombing � Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson testified that RUC members had made death-threats against her. Irish republicans have also endured Congressional scrutiny. In 2002, Illinois Republican congressman Henry Hyde held hearings into the case of the Colombia Three � a year after they were arrested leaving a FARC-controlled area of the South American country. But does Congressional attention really provide any advantage to campaigners in Northern Ireland? On one hand, London has never scurried to react to US Congressional queries they haven�t agreed with. It�s been nearly three years since the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for a fully independent judicial inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, yet Britain hasn�t yet budged. On the other hand, in light of the involvement of presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush and even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton�s recent trip, London can�t risk ignoring official input from Congress. As revelations about the activities of the Mount Vernon UVF � and their responsibility for murdering Mr McCord�s son, Raymond Jnr � have shown, the dark corners of Northern Ireland�s dirty war are far from hidden any more. As things move towards the possible creation of some sort of comprehensive truth-finding process in Northern Ireland, it�s very likely that future Congressional inquiries and hearings will play a role in that process. And Raymond McCord�s testimony is the latest, but not likely the last, proof of that reality. *********** Police shielded my son's murderers, says McCord Belfast Telegraph. Friday, 23 October 2009 Loyalist victims� campaigner Raymond McCord has told a US Congressional committee that the British Government and the PSNI are guilty of shielding the UVF killers of his son. �Why is there such a conspiracy of silence surrounding Raymond�s murder?� asked Mr McCord in his address to the subcommittee on international organizations, human rights and oversight in the House of Representatives. �A democratic society requires that the police must not be above the law. Rather, they must uphold it, and be seen to do so,� he said. �Yet my son�s case clearly demonstrates that in Northern Ireland some police officers and their agents can literally get away with murder.� The hearing, entitled �Concerns Regarding Possible Collusion in Northern Ireland: Police and Paramilitary Groups� was also addressed by John Finucane, the son of murdered Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane. Mr Finucane said his father�s February 1989 killing by the UDA/UFF was �the best-known case of what could have happened to anyone and what did happen to many�. �If the British Government is serious about resolving the situation in Northern Ireland for good and building a lasting peace, then all we ask is this one simple thing,� he said. �They cannot give me back my father; the least they can do is tell me the truth.� Former police ombudsman Nuala O�Loan also testified about her investigation into the November 1997 killing of Raymond McCord Jr. Mrs O�Loan said that, while she had found �no evidence that anyone had been protected from arrest� for the slaying, she had found police investigation failures that �may have significantly reduced the possibility of anyone being held accountable for the murder�. During the hearing several Congressmen, including committee chairmen William Delahunt, Chris Smith, Eliot Engel, and Richard Neal, voiced their support for public and independent inquiries into the McCord and Finucane cases. Neal, who heads Congress�s 180-member-strong Friends of Ireland grouping, announced that he and other members of Congress plan to send a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging him to meet personally with Raymond McCord Sr. *********** Raymond McCord to give evidence at US congress hearing Belfast Telegraph. Thursday, 22 October 2009 The murky circumstances surrounding a loyalist paramilitary murder 12 years ago will be examined in a US Congressional hearing in Washington today. The session of a sub-committee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs will hear direct evidence from Raymond McCord, whose son Raymond Jnr was beaten to death by a UVF gang in 1997. Also giving evidence � by video link from Belfast � will be ex-Police Ombudsman Dame Nuala O'Loan. A major Ombudsman's report by Mrs O'Loan in 2007 vindicated Mr McCord Snr's long campaign to expose high level infiltration of the UVF gang by RUC Special Branch. Speaking from Washington, Mr McCord again challenged the British Government to admit to collusion. �It would also be a nice gesture if unionist politicians finally accepted the facts on collusion as proven by Mrs O'Loan's report,� he added. Mrs O'Loan, meanwhile, said she was approached by Congress to give the context of her report, �which I'm going to do�. ***************** Oral Testimony of Raymond Mc Cord Sr. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight. October 22, 2009 Mr. Chairman and Members, I am most grateful for the opportunity to appear before this Sub Committee. I request my written statement be entered into the record.  I see this Hearing as a lifeline that has been thrown to my family and me. I cannot help but be struck by the difference between the way I have been treated by Members of Congress and the way Unionist/Protestant politicians have treated me. In 2008, when there was a vote taken in the Northern Ireland Assembly on my son’s case, a majority of the Unionist politicians walked out. You can, therefore, see just how much your support means to me. I look to the United States Congress as my last hope of getting justice for my son Raymond Jr. (22) who was brutally murdered in 1997 near Belfast. The killers belonged to a Protestant paramilitary group – the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).  The man who gave the orders to kill my son is Mark Haddock. He was a longtime paid British Government agent, police informer and serial killer as the Police Ombudsman’s Report of 2007 established.1 For nearly 12 years I have campaigned for justice for my son, and for those years the British Government (my government) and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), my police, have blocked and stonewalled me. They have colluded and are still colluding with the killers of my son and many other victims. I really want to emphasize to this Sub Committee that my son’s case is not about police corruption. IT IS ABOUT POLICE AND STATE COLLUSION WITH MURDER. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 promised a “new beginning to policing”. My family and I have experienced no new beginning.  We have only experienced cover-ups, lies and threats. Throughout the key period, the police were controlled by Ronnie Flanagan, former Head of the Special Branch, and Chief constable from 1996-2002. (However, I do recognize there are many fine individuals cops in Northern Ireland who were not allowed to do their job). Sir. Hugh Orde, who until very recently was Chief Constable, was seen as bringing a new attitude to policing. But even he retained Mark Haddock as a paid agent for 15 months after it was established that Haddock had been involved in many murders. Not long after Raymond’s murder, as I began campaigning for justice, the UVF in one night covered the walls of houses in Protestant areas near my home with the following message: “ Daddy Raymond: Which son next – Gareth or Glenn? Your choice”. Hours earlier they had smashed Raymond's headstone with hammers, one of three such attacks. Even though the names of the perpetrators were given to the police, I was the one who was arrested and put in a police cell to shut me up. It was one of many times the police arrested me for no reason other than to try and silence me. The continuing campaign of intimidation and death threats against my family and me is not random. It is controlled and organized and the perpetrators are known because the police and British intelligence have totally penetrated the UVF. The Ombudsman Report, too, has established this. In May 2009, the Irish National Caucus sponsored my visit to Capitol Hill. While here, the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington arranged for me to visit the British Embassy to speak with Nic Hailey, the spokesman for justice and policing in Northern Ireland. Mr. Hailey never answered one question, never offered any explanation, and never uttered the slightest hope that I might get justice for my son. Why is there such a conspiracy of silence surrounding Raymond’s murder? My son was an innocent 22-year-old, a loving son and brother, who was not a threat to any person or any State Why has Mark Haddock had so much influence? How can he so shamefully blackmail the British Government and their security forces? What and who gives this murderer so much power?  The answer is collusion: it effectively gives killers the power to control their government. Haddock’s first murder was in1993, which he admitted to two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives the day after the murder. But instead of being arrested he was given money to go on a foreign holiday and continued to work as an agent and a killer for another 10 years or more. Here are the questions which are central to my son’s case and which the British Embassy refused to answer:      1.Why has no one been charged with Raymond’s murder?      2. Why was Haddock allowed to kill for so long and get paid for it?      3. Why no action against present or former RUC/PSNI officers who refused to be           interviewed or to cooperate with the Ombudsman’s investigation.                       4. Why were police officers allowed to get away with admitting to “coaching and           baby sitting” suspects in sham interviews to ensure the suspects would not           admit to murder?  (Police officers even got away with admitting they handed           over a bomb to Haddock that was used in the Irish Republic.) A democratic society requires that the police must not be above the law. Rather, they must uphold it, and be seen to do so.  Yet my son’s case clearly demonstrates that in Northern Ireland some police officers and their agents can literally get away with murder.  This is not only collusion but also collusion sanctioned from the very top. It is not about the corruption of a few bad apples.  What does it do to Northern Ireland society when the government pays serial killers? What does it do to the policing system when killers are given a wage increase of sixty per cent after they commit their first murder, as happened with Mark Haddock when he murdered Sharon McKenna in 1993? This is the shocking collusion I have been battling against for twelve lonely years. But now it is my hope that with the help of the US Congress, my son will be at last given justice and a great wrong will be righted. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members, from the bottom of my heart. END. 1 Operation Ballast. A Report on the Police Ombudsman’s investigation into matters surrounding the death of Raymond McCord Jr. by Nuala O’Loan. 2007.   Fr. Sean Mc ManusPresident Irish National Caucus Capitol Hill PO BOX 15128 Washington, DC 20003-0849 Tel. 202-544-0568 Fax 202-488-7537 sean@irishnationalcaucus.org