Were racist riots inevitable?
‘I have interviewed Kashmir militants and wasn't afraid, but I wouldn't even get out of the car during Ballymena riots'
INDIAN JOURNALISTVASUNDHARA SIRNATE, WHO HAS LIVED IN NORTHERN IRELAND SINCE 2017, REFLECTS ON YEARS OF EXPERIENCING RACISM AND MICROAGGRESSIONS IN HER ADOPTED COMMUNITY, AND EXPLAINS WHY RECENT ANTI-IMMIGRANT VIOLENCE FELT TRAGICALLY INEVITABLE
On Sunday, June 15, I asked my husband to drive me through the streets that witnessed rioting in Ballymena.
The violence in the town occurred two miles from where we live.
My husband, a local, knew where the rioting had taken place based on what we were reading. I am an Indian journalist who has lived here since 2017.
I wanted to document and bear witness to what had happened. It is what journalists do.
As we turned into one of the affected streets, I saw a scene that, as an Indian, I was all too familiar with.
Broken windows on houses dotting the street had been temporarily patched with plywood. There was a spot on the road where something seemed to have been burned.
A house stood decrepit and fire-scarred, carrying the directionless signature and stain of the anger of an unthinking mob. I had wanted to step out of the car and take detailed pictures. I did not.
In that moment, I was worried that my presence was unwanted and could perhaps spark more violence. As journalists, we never make a situation worse, and the thought crossed my mind that my presence may reignite the problem if people came out of their houses.
As we drove out of the area, without stopping, I started laughing. My husband looked at me quizzically.
“I've interviewed surrendered militants in Kashmir, and I was unafraid”, I said. “But I won't get out of the car in a street in the so-called first world”.
Colour of my skin
I've had time to think about this emotion since. I always knew that the former militants I interviewed in Kashmir, one of the most militarised zones on the planet, had no personal hatred towards me. Their fight was with the Indian government. Here, in Ballymena, I was worried that I could be attacked for the one thing I couldn't change about myself — the colour of my skin.
When I first moved here, a guest at a wedding told me she got a fake tan because she knew she would be sitting next to me. In other incidents, various people from Ballymena have asked me if I was an au pair, a nurse, or a cleaner.
At dinner, someone once asked me why I didn't eat with my hands “like they do in India”. Others have been surprised that I can speak English. I never told them I speak six languages.
In 2018, at a meeting about the Roma migration issue in Harryville organised by a group called the Concerned Residents of Ballymena, where I was the only person of colour in attendance, I was instructed to “go down to the Inter-ethnic Forum” if I had any questions about the Roma people.
He did not speak to me after he realised I was armed with statistics and had some very pointed questions about exactly how the migration worked.
Another woman once commented, after ascertaining I was not Muslim, that she did not understand why Muslim women wore “tents”.
These are bigoted microaggressions that exist to diminish people. The underlying assumption in many of these comments was that someone like me, from a supposed 'third-world' country, could not possibly be in a leadership position anywhere.
Never experienced this level of bigotry before
These were snap judgments made by people before I had even had a proper conversation with them. I had never seen this level of bigotry in a Western country in my whole life, and that too in one town.
None of these incidents, however, compared to what my husband experienced, when a local woman at a party he went to asked him why he was “dressed like a jihadi”, and proceeded to force him out of his Indian men's tunic, called a kurta, which he loved wearing.
He was furious and, for the first time as a white man, began seeing what I was seeing here. Racism was rife, and it expressed itself not in the form of ugly shouting on the streets, but in the everyday actions and commentary of people.
Many people will say that such folk do not represent Northern Ireland, that they constitute a small minority or are uneducated fools. I also agree with them.
I have met some of the most wonderful people here, who have enriched my life in many ways. However, what has occurred in towns like Ballymena recently was driven by those who are prejudiced against “others”. So, how can we dismiss them?
I have chosen to write this piece because I know I am not alone in having faced these situations. Unlike many immigrants, I can speak out and be heard, as I enter this equation with a long career in journalism and academic research, which has also given me a voice.
What use is this voice if it cannot be mobilised for some good? If immigrants do not publicly discuss their experiences, how can we even begin an informed conversation about the problem?
We have seen the correct type of condemnation of the anti-immigrant violence by many well-meaning local politicians and by the most wonderfully progressive individuals on social media. Their statements give me hope, and I applaud them for standing against hate.
However, what we also need is a conversation about why this racism exists and what can be done about it.
Immigrants need to be a part of this conversation.
Riots inevitable?
In my mind, what happened in Ballymena and some other towns was inevitable.
Every single study on collective public violence identifies such violence as being caused by a cluster of factors ranging from the calibration of people's emotions through carefully manufactured misinformation to which there is no counter, the focus on certain violent events (like alleged sexual assault) as inciting incidents for further rounds of violence against minorities, economic uncertainty and backwardness, the ready presence of unemployed youth with lower levels of education, and so on.
All of these conditions apply to a town like Ballymena. People here also live in a town called inequality and deprivation. When a horrific incident, like a minor's alleged sexual assault, occurs, there is bound to be a tendency to pursue extrajudicial collective punishment against an unpopular immigrant group that is seen as causing a lot of local problems, which have not been addressed.
The rage that people already feel gets a direction and a target.
Over the years, I have come to understand my surroundings better, and people here have come to understand me.
This process took time because prejudice is always difficult to dislodge. It is difficult to convince people with preconceived notions about the “other” that even the “other” is a self-contained universe of culture, skills, knowledge and goodness and bears the same equal rights as anyone else. Immigrants are negatively stereotyped in the UK media every time there is a criminal incident involving an immigrant.
Over time, the lines between legal and illegal immigrants have blurred to produce a body of messaging that encourages the fear of the immigrant.
This also enables their institutional and social dehumanisation. If all immigrants are criminals, they don't deserve rights. If they're all bad — legal or illegal — we can burn their houses and cars down. We can drive them out.
So, what can be done? The main thing to remember is that all prejudice breaks down with contact with the “other”.
A reiteration of sectarianism
Study after study in political science proves this. Perhaps in Northern Ireland, what we are seeing as racist violence is a reiteration of the sectarianism that has never truly disappeared, even though massive strides have been made towards this goal.
To put it simply, towns like Ballymena have a pre-existing script of sectarianism. With immigration, this script has become layered.
New dimensions have been added to it. If people already think sectarian thoughts, it is not very difficult for them to think racist thoughts. Therefore, our first conversation should focus on encouraging contact and building trust between local religious communities and between locals and immigrants.
Vasundhara Sirnate is an Indian journalist and political scientist who lives in Northern Ireland
A town trapped in fear where safety means declaring your Britishness
Homes throughout Ballymena have been Biblically marked as ‘safe’ with symbols of ‘Britishness’ in the wake of a spate of anti-migrant intimidation and violence in the Co Antrim town earlier this month.
Conor Sheils reports, Irish News, June 28th, 2025
Violence started in the town on Monday, June 9th.
THE streets of Ballymena are silent now, gone are the TV crews and images of burnt out homes as anti-migrant violence gripped the Co Antrim town in recent weeks.
What remains is an uneasy eeriness and home after home with signs displaying ‘Locals Live Here’
Union flags, Ulster banners, Northern Ireland football shirts, royal bunting, an photos of King Charles are placed on windows up and down streets in parts of the town.
The emblems mirror the biblical marking of Passover doors with the blood of a first born – designed to tell outsiders that Ballymena’s ‘chosen people’ dwell within.
Many houses displaying emblems, flags or union jack stickers are also adorned with chipboard, an uneasy sign that this home was perhaps too late in displaying the appropriate amount of ‘Britishness’ for the rampaging mobs – the flags and signs now alongside the protective timber, acting as an insurance policy against further damage.
Indeed, there are entire streets, whole areas of the town where almost all of the home are adorned with some form of protection symbol ≠ row after row, street after street.
Is it safe yet?
When we visit many homes on a weekday afternoon curtains twitch, dogs bark, but nobody comes to the door as an air of foreboding lingers –a town wondering if it is yet safe to pick up the pieces and tend to the wounds and hurt caused by the recent violence.
Many of those who do answer are just as quick to close the door – cautious of speaking to reporters about the violence that catapulted this small Co Antrim town into the international media spotlight three weeks ago.
Shiva Thavamazar is 23-year-old Nepalese factory worker who has lived and worked in the town with his wife for over a year.
“Before the riots, we felt safe, but during the riots we were very scared, when we came from work, we felt scared and we couldn’t sleep because we afraid that they would break the doors and windows,” he said.
Mr Thavamazar says that the couple are now sleeping again and have no plans to leave as they work in the town, however, he says that the riots have made them feel uneasy about their adopted home.
We meet another local man who says he supported the protests but admits that he and his neighbours have all put notices and British flags in their windows to stop their homes being targeted and are afraid now to take them down.
“We’ve been speaking to a lot of the neighbours, they all feel the same, keeping the notices up on the window,” he said.
The Ballymena man who did not want his name included said that many in the area are keeping the emblems, flags, jerseys, symbols on their doors and windows “just in case”.
Speaking about the migrants living in the town, he said: “It’s not fair to be labelling them all the same really. There are lots of ones here working away.”
He says many people are afraid that trouble could flare up again in the town and that many migrants living in Ballymena “might feel unsafe but its just after the protests but before that they all were fine.”
Signs of the violence are everywhere along the grey residential streets of the town from which Paisleyism spawns.
Protests ‘got out of hand’
NEAR the Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church, an elderly woman advises us to not knock on her neighbour’s door, as they are migrant nurses, sleeping after a long night shift.
The local woman, who declined to give her name, admits that many foreign nationals living in the town probably feel unsafe following the violence and says that the protests “got out of hand”.
She told us that people are afraid that the protests may start again or that their homes could be targeted by the mobs.
Along the town’s Paradise Avenue, the terraced homes are pockmarked with ugly chipboard where glass once provided a veneer of safety from the outside world.
In Clonavon Terrace where much of the violence took place a removal crew can be spotted loading items into a van, the previous occupants having long since fled amidst the violence.
Shiva Thavamazar, a local migrant worker, feared that the home where he and his wife lived would be attacked. Right, some windows have been boarded up after being targeted, while notices, flags, a Northern Ireland/West Ham football banner and a Northern Ireland football shirt hang in windows of some homes in the town
“ Our view of Ballymena has changed – we felt completely safe here before, and even though things are peaceful again now it doesn’t feel the same way
We spot a home adorned with Ulster Volunteer Force stickers on the windows and are greeted by a lady of Asian origin who was unable to speak with us as she was sleeping after working a night shift nearby. The woman seems an unlikely supporter of the UVF, and has perhaps instead been advised that this is the type of Britishness she most display in order to keep her and her home safe from the mostly male rioters who claim their actions are designed to protect women.
The climate of fear and uncertainty is palpable from both foreign nationals and lifelong Ballymena residents – both feeling helpless, trying to protect their lives, their homes and their families in any way that they can – a unifying factor in a place which has seen much division of late.
However, not everyone in the town feels the same.
One man from the Philippines told The Irish News that he had placed a flag outside his home in the hours following the protests but had since taken it in as things were “now calm”. He spoke to us as he prepared to cycle to work at a nearby factory.
Separate lives, common fears
But he is one among many and overall the town exists in a climate of uncertainty two communities living separate lives with the same worries, the same concerns, the same fears.
As we left the town we passed through the rain covered streets of the Harryville area – again each house adorned with emblems -each serving as a marker of supposed Britishness, a Hail Mary effort to keep their homes safe in Antrim’s ‘Bible Belt’.
As we drive away, I speak on the phone with local Alliance councillor Jack Gibson who speaks candidly about how the violence has caused many hardworking migrants to flee their homes.
“A lot of people, if they could get out of Ballymena at the time, they did. You certainly don’t blame them,” he told The Irish News.
“Myself and colleagues within the party have unfortunately been helping some local organisations in helping some of the families who were affected by the riots leave Ballymena for good.
“I look at that and feel very sad because it feels like we’re losing — there are people who’ve come here trying to make a life for themselves who have been forced out, and that’s a very sad thing to see.
“It’s not hard to imagine — if you were in their shoes, if you were someone who’d come to the town and seen that outside your door, or in some cases inside your door, it’s not hard to imagine why you’d come to the conclusion that it’s better to leave.
“What we saw is going to change the way that you feel about a place.
“I know that for a lot of people I’ve spoken to — and to be honest, for myself as well — you see something like that happening in the place you live, in your own town, and it’s going to change your relationship with the place, fundamentally.
“Ballymena is a relatively affluent, prosperous and successful regional town and that is frankly built upon migrant labour.
“During the riots, you’d hear a lot of references to ‘illegals’ but a lot of the people who were being targeted and who have been terrorised by the riots are not illegals. They’re not here illegally — they’re here as migrant workers.
“I think there has to be a focus going forward on how we bring our communities together.”
Omagh- ‘We are where we are’ - Quest for truth about Omagh families collides with reality
Freya McClements, Northern Editor, Irish Times, June 28th, 2025
Omagh bombing inquiry goes to the heart of one the most lasting post-Troubles tensions: the interests of national security versus the rights of individuals to truth and justice
For those bereaved and injured in the August 1998 Omagh bombing, the inquiry into the atrocity brought hope that, finally, they might get answers.
Could the UK authorities have prevented the bombing by Real IRA dissidents that killed 29 people including a woman who was pregnant with twins on a sunny Saturday afternoon?
This week, that hope collided with reality.
Over two days of opening statements, the inquiry heard from the UK government and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on the logistical challenges they faced in providing documents and exhibits to the inquiry.
The slow pace of disclosure has led to an “unfortunate” gap of nine months, as lawyer to the inquiry, Paul Greaney KC, put it; the inquiry cannot now begin considering the bombing itself until March 2026, almost two years after it opened.
Michael Mansfield KC, representing the family of one of the victims, 57-year-old mother of three Libby Rush, cut to the chase.
“It cannot be said that government departments were not on notice,” he said.
“Once this happened on the 15th August, 1998, are we to imagine that state authorities didn’t immediately have meetings ... which should have ensured the preservation [of materials] – not ‘Oh, we only got notice yesterday’.”
In fairness, the task facing them is not inconsiderable. The PSNI has so far made ready 26,000 documents and 2,000 exhibits and reassigned staff. This is a body that is so pushed for resources that earlier this month 24 police officers were reallocated from tackling domestic violence and sexual abuse to deal with public disorder.
Both its barrister and that representing the UK government repeatedly stressed their commitment to assisting the inquiry. None of their explanations, Philip Henry KC said for the PSNI, were an excuse but rather “a candid explanation of what is involved, so that expectations are realistic”.
Yet the difficulties continued. It emerged that a document said to be missing, then destroyed, was subsequently found. The inquiry chairman, Lord Turnbull, echoed families’ concerns “over statements made by state bodies about apparent inability to locate relevant documents” and warned any such assertions would be subject to “the most rigorous scrutiny”.
There were concerns, too, around sensitive material and how this will be approached, particularly given the relevance of intelligence, including warnings said to have been passed on by an alleged British agent, to the answers the inquiry is seeking.
‘Defensive instinct’
Last month it emerged a “considerable body of material” had not been shared with the inquiry because of applications by the UK government and the PSNI to redact information. This, said barrister Stephen Toal KC, representing the families of five of those killed, “speaks to a defensive instinct, not a transparent one.”Just ask the family of Seán Brown. The GAA official was abducted and murdered by loyalists in Bellaghy, Co Derry, in 1997, the year before the Omagh bombing. The UK government is currently challenging a court ruling that it must hold a public inquiry into his killing.
That the Omagh investigation is happening at all is the result of decades of campaigns and courtroom battles, not least by Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son, Aiden, was among the victims. He brought the judicial review which resulted in the High Court judgment ordering the UK government to set up the inquiry.
That same judge also recommended a similar inquiry south of the Border. The Irish Government was repeatedly criticised this week for failing to do so, though Lord Turnbull said he took the repeated assurances he had received about Dublin’s commitment to assisting the inquiry “in good faith”.
Alan Kane KC quoted the future taoiseach, Enda Kenny, in the Dáil in 2004: “You will get your truth, and so will Ireland.”
“Talk is cheap,” said Toal of both governments. “They make warm statements about solidarity, but these families have learned to measure words against deeds.”
‘We are where we are’
As Lord Turnbull observed, some of those listening to the proceedings “may have been thinking to themselves that if the various secretaries of state and other ministers involved had not so staunchly set their face against a public inquiry over the very many years and very many times that such requests were made, the problems now being grappled with would not be so acute”.
Yet, he said: “We are where we are.”
Where we are is that the legacy of the North’s Troubles still has not been dealt with, and the Omagh inquiry goes to the heart of one of its enduring tensions, the interests of national security versus the rights of individuals to life, to justice and to truth.
The bereaved and injured have already suffered through decades of delay, obstruction and denial, broken promises, frustration heaped on devastation, and it is clear this inquiry will be a lengthy and complex one.
States will always seek to protect their secrets, but a way must be found to balance these interests with the “moral imperative”, as one family barrister put it, to provide the answers which have been so desperately sought by so many, for so long.
This is the reality; ultimately the hope, said Michael Mansfield, representing the Rush family, is that “this public inquiry represents the beginning of the end of the story of the Omagh bombing”.
Material for bonfire is removed by city council ahead of beacon event
Paul Ainsworth, Irish News, June 28th, 2025
BONFIRE material at a controversial site in south Belfast has been removed ahead of a planned Eleventh Night beacon event.
Material had appeared at a spot on Annadale Embankment, beside the River Lagan, where an annual bonfire had previously been built.
However, it was removed at the beginning of last month from the area at the behest of Belfast City Council.
The site had not been used for a bonfire since 2019 but in July of last year a small pile of material was gathered on the embankment.
It was due to be removed by the council following a behind-closed-doors committee meeting but was set alight a day before contractors were expected to arrive. Annadale Embankment is one of a number of sites in the city earmarked for a more eco-friendly beacon to be lit on July 11 this year ahead of the Orange Order’s Twelfth celebrations.
Bonfire material was set alight last year shortly before it was due to be removed
The beacon programme is overseen by the council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee (SPRC) and costs £124,500, though Stormont’s Executive Office has contributed £30,000.
The beacons are a cage structure filled with carbon-neutral willow, which burn with less impact on the environment than traditional bonfire material such as wooden pallets and tyres.
The decision to include Annadale Embankment in the programme was made by the SPRC committee last month.
It is understood a small amount of bonfire material was also previously removed from the embankment area by the council in April.
Annadale Embankment is earmarked for a new playpark and playing fields, to be paid for with £250,000 of Peace Plus funding through the Special EU Programmes Body.
The Annadale Open Space project will be built on the former bonfire site, while this year’s beacon burning will take place at a new spot further on down in the embankment area.
‘Absolutely disgusted’
During the SPRC committee meeting last year in which the decision to remove bonfire material was made, it was reported that DUP councillors opposed the plan.
Following the material being set alight shortly before contractors were due to move in, DUP councillor Tracy Kelly, now Belfast’s lord mayor, said she was “absolutely disgusted” at the plan to remove it.
She said the material had been for a smaller “children’s bonfire” and a “farewell” to pyres being built on the site ahead of the new playpark development.
“Members of the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee decided to act in the public interest
A council spokesperson said: “Belfast City Council has worked hard alongside elected members and community representatives to engage with communities on the issue of bonfires, and to encourage the use of beacons.
“Members of the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee decided to act in the public interest and, given the significant impact to people and property at the bonfire in the proximity of Annadale, there was cross-party agreement that action would be taken to remove the materials.
“Belfast City Council’s approach to managing bonfires is led by elected members.
“A member-led decision-making process has been agreed to consider issues and make decisions on a site by site basis.”
NI ministers on collision course over Railway signage row
Liam Tunney, Belfast Telegraph, June 28th, 2025
APPLICATION GRANTED AHEAD OF SEPTEMBER HEARING ON ISSUE
Communities Minister Gordon Lyons can provide evidence to a judicial review into a decision to install dual language signage at Grand Central Station, a judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Scoffield granted an application from Mr Lyons to provide correspondence as well as written and oral submissions to a September hearing on the issue.
Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins announced in March that signage in both English and Irish was to be installed at the transport hub at a cost of £150,000.
Despite warnings from Irish language advocacy groups, the signage was not installed when the station was originally built, with Ms Kimmins introducing the move retrospectively after taking legal advice. Following criticism from unionist politicians, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson applied for a judicial review into the Department for Infrastructure (DfI)'s decision and was granted leave to do so last month.
Mr Bryson's case centres on a claim that the introduction of the signage was controversial and so required agreement from the entire Executive.
At the High Court yesterday, counsel for the Department for Communities (DfC) Denise Kiley KC said Mr Lyons had identified aspects of the case that crossed into his responsibilities.
DfC is responsible for Irish language strategy commitments identified in the New Decade New Approach agreement of January 2020.
“The Minister seeks to develop the evidence picture in a way that assists the court,” said Mr Lyons' counsel.
Executive Deadlock
She added that the Minister had previously asked Ms Kimmins to bring the matter to the Executive Committee for discussion, but that she had refused to do so. Mr Justice David Scoffield suggested a meeting between the ministers may be preferable to court proceedings but conceded: “I'm a little sceptical whether they are ever going to agree.”
DfC counsel Tony McGleenan KC told the court there had been correspondence, but the rationale for the application was that no resolution had been agreed.
Objecting to the application, counsel for DfI said Mr Lyons had not signalled his intention to intervene until this week and that it may impact the case's timetable. “The Minister has had knowledge of this case since May and has sat on his hands until now,” he said.
“It is to the disadvantage of the respondent. There may be a great deal of material and it will inevitably disrupt the litigation timetable.”
Mr Scoffield noted that the application had come “fairly late in the day”.
“It is never encouraging when two ministers in the NI Executive are in adversarial positions in court, though it is not unknown in the jurisdiction,” he said. “I am in favour of permitting the intervention. It will provide relevant evidence that the applicant (Mr Bryson) may not have.
“The respondent has also indicated that the timeline may be amended to maintain the hearing date. I'll accede to the application to intervene.”
At a previous hearing last month, Mr Scoffield ruled that Mr Bryson had established an arguable case in relation to his application for a judicial review of Ms Kimmins' decision.
Representing himself, the loyalist had argued that the MLA unlawfully breached the ministerial code by failing to refer the issue to the Executive Committee for discussion and agreement.
Mr Bryson argued that the test was met based on publicly expressed views by a number of senior unionist politicians.
The court heard correspondence from UUP, TUV, PUP and Orange Order representatives to back Mr Bryson's claims of unionist unity on the issue.
No planned work to install Irish language signage at the station can begin until after the case is resolved. A full hearing is scheduled for September 25.
Man shot by IRA loses legal battle with police over legacy resources
Court challenge was over priority being given to Omagh bomb inquiry
Alan Erwin, Belfast Telegraph and Irish News, June 28th, 2025
A MAN shot in an IRA attack which allegedly involved a British agent has lost a High Court battle against the police for temporarily diverting all available legacy resources to the Omagh bomb inquiry.
Desmond McCabe claimed the PSNI’s decision to put other sensitive research work on hold for six months unlawfully breached an entitlement to have his claim for damages against Peter Keeley determined within a reasonable time.
But a judge dismissed the challenge mounted on an alleged violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mr Justice Humphreys ruled yesterday: “The uncontroverted evidence in this case is that no delay at all, let alone unreasonable delay… has been caused by the impugned decision.”
Mr McCabe survived an attempted murder bid carried out by the IRA in the Newry area back in November 1990.
The shooting was among a series of attacks allegedly linked to Mr Keeley, a former British spy who infiltrated the Provisionals and who uses the pseudonym Kevin Fulton.
Damages are being sought against the one-time agent, along with the police and Ministry of Defence, in a claim for negligence, misfeasance in public office, conspiracy, assault, battery and trespass.
In March this year it was announced all qualified PSNI researchers were being assigned to sensitive work on behalf of the public inquiry into the Real IRA bombing of Omagh in August 1998 which claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.
The request for material on 32 other dissident republican attacks in the 1990s led to the PSNI pausing all other sensitive legacy-related casework for six months due to underfunding and resources.
Mr McCabe’s lawyers claimed the decision was irrational and unlawfully breached Article 6 rights to have his civil action dealt with.
Judicial review proceedings were brought against the chief constable, and also the Department of Justice for an alleged failure to provide the necessary resources to progress legacy litigation.
But police insisted they have already provided sensitive discovery in a lead case among the series of actions related to the alleged activities of Mr Keeley.
Correspondence on behalf of the PSNI contended that the temporary redirection of sensitive research resources was not impacting on the civil action.
Based on those assertions, Mr Justice Humphreys ruled the challenge had no legal merit and must be dismissed.
Families of Chinook crash victims to continue fight for public inquiry
Lucinda Cameron, Belfast Telegraph, June 28th, 2025
The families of those killed in the 1994 Chinook helicopter crash have vowed to press on with seeking a judicial review after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) dismissed their demands for a judge-led public inquiry.
RAF Chinook ZD576 was carrying 25 British intelligence personnel from RAF Aldergrove in NI to a conference at Fort George near Inverness when it crashed in foggy weather on June 2, 1994, on the Mull of Kintyre.
All 25 passengers — made up of personnel from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Army — were killed, along with the helicopter's four crew members.
The families launched legal action in a “letter before action” to the Government sent earlier this month on the 31st anniversary of the crash.
They said they will now pursue a judicial review after the MoD rejected their demands for a public inquiry into the crash, and for access to files which have been sealed for 100 years.
Nicola Rawcliffe, whose brother Major Christopher Dockerty was killed in the crash aged 33, said she is “furious and disgusted” with the MoD's decision to summarily “dismiss our claim” and accused it of “continuing to deceive our families and disrespect our loved ones' memories” by claiming that many previous inquiries investigated all the facts.
Following the crash, the Chinook's pilots, Flight Lieutenants Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, were accused of gross negligence, but this verdict was overturned by the Government 17 years later following a campaign by the families.
A subsequent review by Lord Philip set out “numerous concerns” raised by those who worked on the Chinooks, with the MoD's testing centre at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire declaring the Chinook Mk2 helicopters “unairworthy” prior to the crash.
Helicopter not fit for purpose
Andy Tobias, who was eight when his father Lieutenant Colonel John Tobias (41) was killed, said his childhood was stolen from him because the helicopter “was not fit for purpose”.
Coalescing under the banner of the Chinook Justice Campaign, they said a failure to order a public inquiry is a breach of the Government's human rights obligations.
Solicitor Mark Stephens, from the law firm Howard Kennedy, said the decision by the MoD to dismiss the claim “is an unforgivable betrayal of service people who gave their lives for their country and an undisguised slap in the face for their long-suffering and bereaved families” as he said a judicial review will now be sought.
A MoD spokesperson said their sympathies remain with the loved ones of all those who died and acknowledged the “lack of certainty about the cause of the crash has added to the distress”.
“It's unlikely that a public inquiry would identify any new evidence or reach new conclusions on the basis of existing evidence,” they added.
It is understood the sealed documents contain personal information relating to third-party individuals and the early release of this information would breach those individuals' data protection rights.
Paisley Legacy: Vast sums of cash, three mortgages and mystery owner
Sam McBride, Northern Ireland Editor, Belfast Telegraph, June 28th, 2025
BELFAST TELEGRAPH PROBE ESTABLISHES THERE WERE PLENTY OF PECULIAR ACTIONS AROUND THE THEN MP'S OFFICE - NOW OWNED BY AN UNNAMED REPRESENTATIVE OF A DEAD MAN, WHICH HIS FAMILY LEARNT FROM US INVESTIGATION
In the heart of Ballymena lies a valuable property paid for by taxpayers but whose true owner remains a mystery — and is now hidden behind a dead man's name.
The office at 9-11 Church Street was the epicentre of the empire created by the late Ian Paisley and his son Ian Paisley Jr — although it was the latter who always appeared to be far more heavily involved in the project.
A Belfast Telegraph investigation has uncovered a series of unexplained financial dealings and raises questions about how politicians use public money given to them to help serve their constituents.
We began examining the property after Paisley lost his North Antrim Westminster seat to Jim Allister in the biggest upset of last year's General Election.
Since then, it has lain vacant and now the company which owns it is on the brink of being wound up. But where the money — likely more than half a million pounds — from the office's sale will go remains unclear.
Last week we revealed that for years rates bills on the property were not being paid, with repeated red letters, threats of court action and bounced cheques. More than £5,000 in rates remains unpaid.
But far more significant is ownership of the office itself, and that involves a much deeper enigma.
From the outset, this office was controversial. It was key to Paisley Jr's resignation as a junior minister in 2008, just months after the office had been bought in a deal involving the property developer Seymour Sweeney.
‘I know of him’
There was no suggestion that Sweeney did anything wrong, but the revelation of his role was acutely embarrassing for Paisley who had lobbied for him but publicly played down their connection, saying “I know of him”.
Days after that link emerged, along with the eye-wateringly high rent being claimed from public funds for the building, Paisley resigned as a junior minister.
The office had been bought by a company called Sarcon No 250 Ltd, which was later renamed Ballymena Advice Centre Ltd. It was presented by Paisley as a corporate entity which was a non-profit means for the DUP to hold the property “in perpetuity”.
Initially, Sweeney was a director. He was replaced by Paisley's father-in-law, James Currie who was in turn replaced by Sam Hanna, a veteran DUP councillor and farmer.
He became the office's sole shareholder and director — but it always was abundantly clear that he wasn't really in charge.
In 2009, when the Belfast Telegraph asked Hanna about the company's profits, he said: “I know flip all about it.”
In 2014, BBC Spotlight questioned who would ultimately own the building when the mortgage was cleared. Even though at that point Hanna legally owned the building, he told the BBC that he didn't know who the real owner was or where the rent went.
He was “just a side-kick”, he said, adding that Paisley had brought him in “to tide things over”. He said Paisley told him that “under no circumstances was he to answer any [BBC] questions”.
Later, in a statement issued through the DUP press office, Hanna retracted some of what he'd said and claimed that the ultimate beneficiary of the rent was “the bank”.
Clearly when the mortgage was paid off this would no longer be the case.
When questions started to be raised about his office arrangements in February 2008, Paisley described it as evidence of “a long-term commitment by the DUP to the constituency”.
Astronomic rents
The Paisleys were revealed to have been claiming a massive £57,200 a year — equivalent to more than £93,000 in today's money — from public funds to rent the office. The astronomical cost was, Paisley insisted, market value.
The next highest claimant in the entire Assembly was Nigel Dodds; his £20,000 a year was a third of the Paisleys' claims, and it related to two offices rather than one — both of which were in the capital, Belfast.
By contrast, Alliance leader David Ford was claiming just £3,000, as was the SDLP's Patsy McGlone.
Paisley said that the rent “goes straight to the Bank of Ireland”.
He accepted that he was “the mover and shaker” in the deal to buy the office, but stressed: “I did not want to buy the property myself and rent to myself and put my father in an awkward position of renting from me.”
After a complaint to the Assembly, standards commissioner Tom Frawley wrote to the solicitors at whose address the company was registered, asking them who the ultimate owner was.
He said the lawyers “declined, on grounds of client confidentiality, to disclose the identity of the beneficial owner or owners”.
However, the commissioner established that even after Hanna took over as director, Paisley's father-in-law retained all the shares. Soon, full control of the company transferred to Hanna.
He also noted that “there is no evidence on the public record to sustain the contention that there is a trust in place governing the role or actions of [the company]” and that there was no reference in the objects of the company to it holding the building in trust in perpetuity for the DUP, as Paisley claimed.
Then, as now, it was against Assembly rules for MLAs to claim public money to rent offices which they owned — and weren't allowed to use Assembly expenses to buy a constituency office.
Frawley said that “the information which has been made available to me indicates that neither Mr Paisley Jr nor Dr Paisley own the premises... nor is the property being purchased by them”.
The commissioner said that the Assembly authorities told him that using public money to buy an office for a political party wasn't against the rules
He said that “effectively the [expenses are] being used to create a property asset for a political party” and suggested the Assembly may want to consider if that was appropriate.
If taxpayers funded an asset worth more than half a million pounds which was to now go to a political party, that in itself would be controversial. However, it appears that the money won't be going to the DUP.
Huge amounts but little equity
By 2008, Ballymena Advice Centre's assets were valued at £592,471 and £588,614 was owed to creditors — presumably the mortgage to cover the purchase and the £100,000 of work which was done to the property. This means that the company had very little equity in the building, something common at a time of the housing boom when banks would give out mortgages of up to 100% — or more — of a property's value.
That also suggests that when the property crash saw the average value of property roughly half, the owner would have been in serious negative equity.
That was the only time the company ever filed accounts.
In December 2009, Ballymena Advice Centre applied to change from being a limited company to an unlimited company. This meant that Hanna lost the protection of limited liability; from now on, if it got into financial difficulty, those to whom it owed money could come after him personally.
Doing this is unusual. However, being unlimited allowed the company to keep its financial affairs private; it no longer had to file annual accounts with Companies House.
Sudden death
Shrouded in secrecy, that's where the matter rested until March 2023 when Hanna died suddenly. There was no time to put in place alternative ownership arrangements and so this DUP veteran who appears to have been a front figure for the true owner died as the legal owner of valuable property.
Some 21 days after Hanna's death, someone with access to the company's electronic account filed with Companies House that he had ceased to own most of the company and terminated his directorship.
More than a year later, 'The Personal Representatives of Samuel Hanna' were registered as owning the company — and that was backdated to his death.
The date of birth given was Hanna's, and their nationality was listed as British.
The company's articles of association state that where a sole director dies, “the personal representatives of such a deceased member shall have the right by notice in writing to appoint a person to be a director of the company”.
Controller of assts a mystery
However, that has not happened here. Instead, more than two years after Hanna's death no director has been appointed by his 'personal representative' who themselves remains in sole control without revealing their identity.
In a Companies House filing last April, the company said it had two shareholders — one was Sam Hanna, and one was his 'personal representatives'. That is the company's last filing and suggests that his shareholding should have formed part of his estate — yet his ownership of at least half a company worth hundreds of thousands of pounds did not form part of the money divided between those named in his will.
We have obtained a copy of Hanna's will from the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast. It shows that he made the will in 2002, long before owning the office.
Remarkably, however, the executor of his will — Hanna's son, Alan Hanna — told the Belfast Telegraph that he knew nothing of his father's ownership of the office until we contacted him about the issue.
He said that his father “was of that generation that would have done anything for the party”.
However, he said that his father never informed him about the office arrangement. Having gone through his father's papers as executor of his will, he said: “I didn't see any mention of it.”
He said categorically that his family had never received any rent or other income from the property which in law his father owned.
But there's yet another element to the story which involves large sums of money.
Three mortgages
The Belfast Telegraph has discovered that at one point there were three mortgages on the property.
There was an original mortgage with Bank of Ireland, followed by a second mortgage with AIB which was taken out in December 2014 — despite the fact that huge sums were being claimed from public funds on the basis that they were to pay down the mortgage.
Then in June 2022, a third mortgage was taken out against the property. This one was far more unusual.
It wasn't taken out with a bank or large financial institution. Instead, it was taken out with Dunbarton Estates (Co Down) Ltd.
There were three parties to the deal — Dunbarton Estates, Ballymena Advice Centre Ltd, and Hanna personally. Hanna was listed as the personal guarantor — a highly significant position which meant he was legally liable for payments if the company defaulted.
The mortgage set out an eye-wateringly high rate of interest — 10% — at a time when the Bank of England base rate was just 1%. There is no obvious reason as to why a company which had seemingly paid off much of its mortgage and had a reliable tenant whose rent was guaranteed by Westminster in what then appeared to be a safe DUP seat would take on another mortgage — and even less obvious why that mortgage wouldn't be with a bank, but with a small company charging a high rate of interest.
Someone was getting access to huge sums of money — perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds — but there is no evidence to suggest it was Sam Hanna.
One of the two directors of Dunbarton Estates is David Mahon, a well-known Fermanagh-based businessman and senior figure in the Orange Order.
When contacted by the Belfast Telegraph, he said he knew nothing about the issue but would check it out. When asked about the 10% interest rate, he said that wouldn't be unusual for a bridging loan — a high interest type of temporary loan to tide a company over for a short period.
However, a copy of the legal agreement makes clear that it was a mortgage and not a bridging loan.
After researching the issue, Mahon later told us that the details we put to him about it were correct.
There is no suggestion that Mahon or his company have done anything wrong.
When asked who actually owns the office, Mahon said: “I don't have a clue, to be honest with you.”
When asked about Paisley, he said: “We never actually spoke to Ian Paisley; it was through a broker. I never actually met Ian Paisley at all.”
Mahon said he thought that the 'personal representatives of Samuel Hanna' would probably be those named in his will. However, when told that didn't happen, he expressed surprise.
Alan Hanna said: “It seems to me that somebody's just using my dad's name.”
One local DUP source said: “There was always a veil of secrecy around the issue…it was something that was never talked about.”
‘Commingled’ funds
Central DUP sources said they never had any knowledge of who really owned the building. One said there had never been “commingling” of central party funds with those of the North Antrim Association, which Paisley controlled, partly due to tensions between the DUP leadership and Paisley after his father's removal as leader.
We phoned Paisley last week and he didn't answer. We sent him a list of written questions about the situation but there was no response. We phoned him again this week and he answered briefly before immediately hanging up. We contacted him again in writing but there was no response.
The DUP told us that the property “is not owned by the party and has never been so”.
Despite Paisley's claim that it was to be held “in perpetuity” for DUP use, now the sole North Antrim DUP MLA, Paul Frew, is claiming public funds to rent another office in Ballymena while Paisley's old office lies empty.
Three weeks ago, a legal notice was published to say that Ballymena Advice Centre will be struck off the register and dissolved within two months “unless cause is shown to the contrary”.
We asked Companies House about the concern that the true owner is now hidden. It said: “If anyone has concerns about the behaviour of a company they are advised to contact Companies House.”
If you have information about this story, contact Sam McBride in confidence at sam.mcbride@belfasttelegraph.co.uk or write to Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph House, 33 Clarendon Road, Belfast
