24 March 2025
Please see below statement from NI Veterans Commissioner, David Johnstone.
Over the weekend it came to light that the Ministry of Defence is set to challenge the recent inquest ruling by Mr Justice Humphreys that the military was not justified in using lethal force at Clonoe in 1992.
As Veterans Commissioner, I welcome this decision by the Ministry of Defence and have been actively encouraging a legal challenge in discussions I have had with the Minister for Veterans and People, Al Carns MP, the NI Secretary of State, Hilary Benn MP, and others, since the Clonoe verdict last month.
As I said shortly after the inquest ruling, many veterans believe there is a deliberate strategy by the republican movement to use the legal system to demonise the security forces. The so called ‘armed struggle’ may be over, but 27 years on from the Belfast Agreement in 1998, veterans are now being pursued through the legal process, in what many feel is “legal warfare” in an attempt to re-write history and deflect from the facts that 9 out of every 10 deaths, during the Troubles, were carried out by terrorists.
During the NI Troubles, our Armed Forces operated within strict rules of engagement and did so on behalf of the UK Government in order to uphold law and order and to keep the peace. The soldiers at Clonoe were faced with heavily armed members of the East Tyrone IRA unit who had carried out a campaign of sectarian murders, and who had claimed the lives of many members of the security forces. With that in mind, it is only right and proper that the Clonoe ruling is challenged via judicial review.