{"id":22580,"date":"2025-02-06T12:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T12:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/1992-shooting-of-ira-men-was-unjustified-says-inquest\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T12:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T12:44:12","slug":"1992-shooting-of-ira-men-was-unjustified-says-inquest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/1992-shooting-of-ira-men-was-unjustified-says-inquest\/","title":{"rendered":"1992 shooting of IRA men was ‘unjustified’ says inquest"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Julian O’Neill<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC News NI crime and justice correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PacemakerPacemaker<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The SAS opened fire as the four men entered Patrick’s Church car park in Clonoe, County Tyrone<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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An inquest has ruled the use of lethal force by SAS soldiers was unjustified when they opened fire killing four IRA men in an ambush at Clonoe in County Tyrone.<\/p>\n

Kevin Barry O’Donnell, 21, Sean O’Farrell, 22, Peter Clancy, 21, and Patrick Vincent, 20, died in February 1992, minutes after they had carried out a gun attack on Coalisland police station.<\/p>\n

The soldiers opened fire as the men arrived at St Patrick’s Church car park in a hijacked lorry which had a heavy machine gun welded to its tailgate.<\/p>\n

Security forces had intelligence the car park would be used and 12 soldiers were in position behind a hedgerow.<\/p>\n

They opened fire without warning when the lorry drove in \u2013 firing more than 500 rounds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lethal force ‘cannot have been reasonable’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"PacemakerPacemaker<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

An inquest has ruled the shooting of Peter Clancy, Kevin Barry O’Donnell and Sean O’Farrell by the SAS was unjustified<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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In statements at the time, the soldiers stated the use of lethal force was justified to protect their lives and those of their colleagues from the danger the IRA unit presented.<\/p>\n

However, coroner Mr Justice Michael Humphries found the use of lethal force cannot have been reasonable.<\/p>\n

He said there was no attempt to arrest the four IRA men, even as they lay wounded.<\/p>\n

Mr Justice Humphries added that state agencies had “perpetuated falsehoods” about the incident, having claimed at the time there had been a gun battle.<\/p>\n

In fact, the IRA men had not fired on the soldiers.<\/p>\n

He referred to a Ministry of Defence document which had referred to the operation as “an excellent security forces success”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Julian O’Neill BBC News NI crime and justice correspondent Pacemaker The SAS opened fire as the four men entered Patrick’s Church car park in Clonoe, County Tyrone An inquest has ruled the use of lethal force by SAS soldiers was unjustified when they opened fire killing four IRA men in an ambush at Clonoe in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1508,8422,691,875,8423],"class_list":["post-22580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news","tag-inquest","tag-ira","tag-men","tag-shooting","tag-unjustified"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22582,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580\/revisions\/22582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}