A botched warning call by the IRA caused or contributed to the deaths of 21 people killed in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, an inquest jury at the city’s civil court has concluded. The six female and five male jurors concluded all the victims were unlawfully killed, following a direction from coroner Sir Peter Thornton QC. The man, identified only as Witness O — speaking over a secure video-link — named the officer commanding the Birmingham IRA at the time, Seamus McLoughlin, as the person responsible for selecting the targets. Pressed by Leslie Thomas QC, the barrister representing nine of the bereaved families, that another member of the bombing team was Michael Hayes, he replied: “Hayes, Hayes — I’ll give it [the name] to you now.”But he added, in apparent reference to the Belfast Agreement: “But he can’t be arrested. Their case remains one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in English legal history.

Source: The Irish Times April 05, 2019 12:45 UTC