Murdered soldiers’ comrade slams amnesty letters

A comrade of three young Scots soldiers gunned down in cold blood by the IRA has slammed amnesty letters dished out to Republican murder suspects.

Teenage brothers John and Joesph McCaig were lured to their deaths by a ‘honey trap’ along with their colleague Dougald McCaughey.

The Royal Highland Fusiliers were enticed into a car by three women, driven out to a remote mountain road and shot in the head at close range.

They were the first off duty soldiers to be killed during the Troubles and nobody has ever been prosecuted.

It’s not known whether the perpetrators were among the nearly 200 terror suspects who received letters from the UK Government assuring them they did not face arrest and prosecution for their crimes.

The men’s comrade, Lance Corporal Joe O’Hare, has branded the deal clearing suspected terrorists a disgrace.

The 65-year-old insisted: “The price of the Good Friday Agreement is too high. It is scandalous to let murderers off. People who have committed atrocities. It should never have happened.

“Very few people have come to trial for murders in Northern Ireland. Nobody should be allowed to get away with murder. Nobody should be above the law”.

John Downey, 62, is suspected of carrying out the 1982 Hyde Park bombing in which four soldiers and seven horses were killed in a bomb blast.

However, a judge at the Old Bailey ruled he can’t be prosecuted because bungling Northern Ireland police wrongly guaranteed in 2007 he would not face trial over any historic offences.

He was one of 187 ‘on-the-runs’ who benefitted under the terms of the Good Friday Peace deal.

Mr O’Hare, who went on to become a Sergeant Major, said he has lived for the past 43 years knowing who killed his colleagues.

Private John McCaig, 17, and his brother Joseph, 18, were among the youngest military casualties of the troubles.

They were shot in the head as they stood with colleague Dougald McCaughey, 23, on a mountain road outside Belfast.

Father-of-five Mr O’Hare added: “The army knew and I knew who the gunmen were. But they were never brought to justice.

“What I will say is that if you went through the whole of Belfast, the whole of Northern Ireland you would not have found three more innocent young men.

“They were wee boys who were inexperienced and got into the back of a car. I can remember identifying their bodies like it was yesterday. The boys were slabbed out, killed by shots to the back of the head.

“You could still see the innocence, it was still there. It is still there to this day. I miss them. I still think of them every day.

“Having seen the pain and hurt first hand, I can only imagine the devastation at the denial of justice these letters will have caused the families.

“John Downey should have stood trial. Nobody’s saying for definite he committed the crime. That was for the court to decide.

“However, it’s like he got a ‘not proven’ verdict and the grieving families have not got closure.”

The brother of Hyde Park bombing victim Lt Anthony Daly says he’s furious at the collapse of the case.

Christopher Daly said: “I may appear calm on the surface, but I can assure you that deep inside I am seething as hell.

“This scenario has opened up the wound as if it happened yesterday.”

By Graham McKendry and Jim Lawson