The State holds millions of documents in relation to the Troubles. These relate to the thousands of killing and the many more injuries. They are comprised of records made by the Army, the RUC, the Security Service and the Northern Ireland Office, in particular. The records are held in the Public Record Office NI [PRONI] in Belfast and in the National Archives in Kew. That’s the official version. Millions more records are still held by individual bodies or deposited in huge warehouses in England or Seapark, County Antrim.
We are continuing to research the documents which are officially held and which are open to the public. However we are challenging the decisions to keep certain documents secret or the partial redaction of documents. More importantly we are probing the failure of PRONI or Kew to secure documents for public scrutiny. For example huge numbers of RUC files remain hidden.
We can explain to you how you can go about doing your own research or we can offer to do it for you. We have links to other organisations who have carried out research on documents and we can explain the benefits and the present limitations of the system.
We offer these services to individuals, groups or community organisations.
We have also carried out extensive research into the supply of Semtex to PIRA by Libya.
We have also researched the use of informers by the RUC, the Army and the Security Service and whether any of these informers participated in crimes, including murder. This is an important area of research and one where, to date, few cases have seen the light of day. Again we are able to explain how you might pursue a grievance you have about this.