The Murder of Seamus Ludlow in County Louth, May 1976. Towards a public inquiry?
The Murder of Seamus Ludlow in County Louth, May 1976. Towards a public inquiry?
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Introduction to the murder of Seamus Ludlow and the official cover-up. Michael Cunningham investigation - 1978 The recent Campaign for Truth and Justice. Irish Victims Commission Report. Ludlow family's questions for the RUC (now the PSNI). Jim J. Kane's letter to the N I Human Rights Commission. Jim J. Kane's letter to the RUC Ludlow Family Letter to Bertie Ahern Other Ludlow Family Sites. |
The Sunday Tribune, 16 May 1999: Ludlow inquiry shows collusion Ed Moloney Northern Editor A confidential internal Garda inquiry has discovered evidence supporting allegations that members of the Garda, including special branch officers, and elements of the Northern security forces colluded to suppress a police investigation into the loyalist murder of Dundalk man Seamus Ludlow in 1976, The Sunday Tribune has learned. It is understood that the inquiry has confirmed allegations that detectives at Garda headquarters were aware of the identities of the four loyalist suspects very shortly after the murder on 1 May 1976 but did nothing about it. The Dublin murder squad investigation was wound up with no explanation only three weeks after Ludlow's death. Ludlow had been picked up outside a Dundalk bar by a car containing three members of the Loyalist Red Hand Commandos and another man was shot dead near his home several miles away. No one has ever been charged with the killing and at the time the gardai encouraged the false view that the IRA had killed him for informing. The Ludlow case is fast becoming a human rights cause celebre because of allegations that the security forces on both sides of the border covered the case up to protect one of the loyalist killers. Now the garda report is expected to cause what one source described as "serious problems" for the Government as it faces increasing demands for a public inquiry into the affair. One of the more disturbing allegations investigated by Chief Superintendent Ted Murphy is that garda special branch detectives divided the Ludlow family by separately alleging to different parts that members of the other part had informed on Ludlow to the IRA. With each section of the family blaming the other for the murder the effect was to stymie any campaign to discover the truth for nearly two decades. According to sources familiar with the Murphy report the investigation's conclusions "would feed the suspicion that between garda special branch and the security forces across the border there was an unhealthy degree of collegiality" during the Ludlow murder probe. The Murphy report will indirectly boost calls for an inquiry into the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombs. Similar allegations that the gardai knew the identities of the UVF culprits who killed 32 people in May 1974 but failed to act have surfaced recently
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