Leckey wants shoot-to-kill briefs
The new chief constable has been given less than six weeks to release controversial reports into alleged “shoot-to-kill” deaths.
Senior coroner John Leckey directed Matt Baggott to give him the Stalker and Sampson reports by 9 November.
He was speaking at a preliminary hearing into the deaths, which took place nearly 27 years ago.
Mr Leckey was repeating a demand he made to former Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde in October 2007.
Mr Baggot takes over as the PSNI’s chief constable on 22 September.
The inquests are into the November 1982 deaths of IRA men Sean Burns, Eugene Toman and Gervaise McKerr near Lurgan, County Armagh.
Police fired 109 bullets into the car they were travelling after they claimed it crashed through a checkpoint.
It later emerged the three were suspected of involvement in the killings of three RUC officers in a bomb a fortnight earlier and had been under observation.
Mr Leckey also plans to hold inquests into the deaths of Catholic teenager Michael Tighe, shot dead by police at a hay shed near Craigavon, County Armagh in November 1982, and suspected INLA men Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew, shot dead near Armagh in December 1982.
The government has always denied any “shoot-to-kill” policy existed and has resisted calls from families to look again at what happened.
Former Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Sir John Stalker was brought in to investigate. He was later replaced by Colin Sampson, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police.
