Death of Aidan McAnespie: Irish government refuses to hand over report
The Irish Department of Justice has insisted it will not release an unpublished report into the shooting of Aidan McAnespie.
The 24-year-old was shot dead by a British soldier as he walked through a border checkpoint at Aughnacloy in February 1988.
The day after the shooting the Irish government appointed Garda deputy commissioner Eugene Crowley to investigate the killing.
The results of the investigation were received by the Minister for Justice Gerry Collins in April 1988, but have never been published.
Speaking in Belfast yesterday Mr McAnespie’s niece Una McCabe called on the Irish government to release the report’s findings.
“For the family to get full closure we need access to the Crowley Report. It is frustrating that we are getting more answers and more acknowledgement from the British than we are from our own Irish government,” she said.
Paul O’Connor, from the Pat Finucane Centre, said the family would accept the same limited access which the Historical Enquiries Team was given to the report during its investigation.
“It is certainly a bizarre situation that the Department of Justice hasn’t awoken to the fact that we’re in a situation of truth recovery,” Mr O’Connor said.
“I would certainly urge Dermot Ahern to consider what has happened here today, given that in the North the family has found a measure of solace and comfort.”
But last night a spokesperson for the Department of Justice confirmed the report would not be released.
“It would not be proper to renege on the assurances of confidentiality given by deputy commissioner Crowley to witnesses who assisted his inquiry,” she said.
“To do so now would call into question the value of any assurances of confidentiality that might ever be given in the future.”
