A man has finally learned that loyalist paramilitaries from the UVF were responsible for his father's death 50 years ago.
Father of nine, John Crawford, was killed in January 1974 at the furniture workshop he owned in West Belfast and for the past five decades his had been searching for answers about who murdered him, reports Belfast Live.
The Official IRA were initially blamed but took no responsibility and false allegations were circulated that his father had been behind two murders.
John's brother Paul had previously emphasised the importance to the family of clearing their father’s name. The UVF’s involvement in the murder first became clear three years after the killing in 1977 when Raymond Glover, a man with UVF connections, confessed and was jailed.
The family had to endure an inquest, a criminal trial, a Police Ombudsman report and a Historical Enquiries Team report in their search for answers surrounding the death of Mr Crawford.
His son Paul said he secured the answers his family wanted by talking to the UVF, through an interlocuter named Winston Irvine. The process began back in 2016, when Paul worked with Mr Irvine to ask questions and receive answers as well as verifying what he was told.
The UVF also confirmed their suspicions that there had been collusion in the murder. Although the UVF claimed there had been no joint enterprise involving other groups or agencies, they said they now accept the information they acted on had been wrong.
Queen’s University academic Professor Kieran McEvoy said this process had been “a first” for loyalism. Professor McEvoy said the only real comparison is the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), where the IRA and INLA have provided information to help try to find the remains of people who ‘disappeared’.
Paul said that the UVF delivered “absolutely full answers and full resolution of what I was seeking”.
“My father was an innocent man who was brutally murdered in a sectarian assassination for which no organisation ever claimed responsibility,” he said.
“My mother Eileen, now deceased, told journalists immediately after the murder in 1974, ‘we want to know who did this and why it should happen to him’. Like many families who lost loved ones, that has remained our quest in the ensuing five decades.”
Paul says the original investigation was “poor” and that the brief inquest in 1974 had merely confirmed his dad's cause of death. “One man, James Glover, was convicted in 1978 of the murder after he was arrested for something else and confessed to being involved in my father’s killing and several others.
“However, because he pleaded guilty at trial there was no cross examination and opportunity to learn anything further,” he said.
“A subsequent Police Ombudsman investigation, during the tenure of Al Hutchinson as ombudsman, was a complete waste of time. A Historical Enquiries Team report confirmed that my father was an innocent man but that determination was undermined by the fact that one of the original investigating RUC officers was dead and another refused to cooperate.
“After all of these processes, we still had many questions and I concluded that those questions could only be answered by the group responsible, the UVF.
“The process took a long time as it involved agreeing a set of ground rules, with me setting out clearly the information that I was seeking, including that I was not looking for the names of those involved, and then the information being relayed back and forward over many scores of meetings via the interlocutor.
“Ultimately, my family and I received answers to the questions we were seeking and a formal written acknowledgement of responsibility for the murder from the UVF.
“I do not believe in closure – my father was brutally and unjustifiably taken from us and that is a wound that will never heal – but as far as I am concerned this process has delivered absolutely full answers and full resolution of what I was seeking.”
The Victims Commissioner Ian Jeffers commended Paul as “tremendously brave”.
“From my point of view, it shows that with the right tenacity and the right approach you can get information – but the reality is leaving that up to the victim to do seems very, very cruel and that’s something we must address as a civil society,” he said.
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