Intelligence

Fresh inquiry into murder of soldier by IRA

Liam Clarke

AN OFFICIAL reinvestigation of the murder by the IRA of a British soldier more than 30 years ago has been launched amid concerns that the wrong man may have been convicted.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission has launched a review of the case following claims made by Nigel Mumford, a former member of the parachute regiment and the SAS, to The Sunday Times

Mumford says an innocent man has been convicted of the killing of his best friend in west Belfast in 1972.

He was first on the scene after Francis Bell, 18, a fellow para, was killed by a single shot from a sniper while on patrol on the Ballymurphy estate. Shortly afterwards, Mumford claims to have seen Gerry Adams near the scene and is now calling on the Sinn Fein president to reveal what he knows about the shooting.

Bell died three days later in hospital.

Mumford believes Liam Holden, the 18-year-old chef who was convicted, should be cleared. Adams’s possible presence and doubts over Holden’s guilt were first highlighted in an article in The Sunday Times in 1998.

“I am quite sure Liam Holden is innocent and I don’t mind helping the lad. I would love the man responsible to be done, but I’d also like the innocent man to be cleared,” said Mumford, who was a medical officer at the time of the killing and treated Bell’s wounds within three minutes of him being shot. “I have a very clear memory of this because it was my friend who was killed, I often dream about it.”

Holden served 17 years for the killing and has had difficulty socialising ever since his conviction.

Despite Mumford’s role, he was not called as a witness in the trial and only learnt someone had been convicted when he showed The Sunday Times a memoir of his time in Belfast.

After tending to his dying friend, Mumford and a group of other soldiers carried out an impromptu raid on a block of flats from where they believed the shots had come. There they found three men, one of whom he believes was Adams. The Sinn Fein leader denies IRA membership but is widely believed to have been the terrorist group’s officer commanding the Ballymurphy area at the time.

In his autobiography, Before the Dawn, Adams gives a fictionalised account of the murder of a paratrooper in similar circumstances. There is a difference in that the victim is an officer not a private and the IRA gunman is taken away in a car.

Much of the evidence would not be admitted in court today. The arrest was irregular and Holden made several attempts to withdraw his confession. The bullet that killed Bell was never recovered and there was nothing to link the alleged murder weapon to the fatal wound. No forensic traces were found on Holden either. An informer who had implicated him was never produced as a witness, nor was Mumford.

Patricia Coyle, Holden’s solicitor said: “Mr Holden doesn’t want any publicity at the moment. The application has been lodged and the CCRC is going through the process of assessing it and conducting their inquiries.”


Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.

April 9, 2004 at 09:03 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (52) | Top of page | Blog Home