The European Court of Human Rights will decide on Friday whether or not police and British soldiers in Northern Ireland used excessive force during violent incidents between 1982 and 1992. Fourteen people died during the incidents in question. The court in Strasbourg will hand down a written judgement in four cases brought by relatives of the dead. The relatives claim that British troops and the RUC implemented a "shoot to kill" policy, and that subsequent legal inquiries by the authorities were insufficient. Britain has denied that its Army or the RUC had operated a "shoot to kill" policy in the North.
Among those who died in the incidents were Sinn Féin member, Patrick Shanaghan, who was killed in 1991, and eight suspected IRA members who were ambushed by 24 British soldiers. Three other men, who were unarmed, were shot dead in a car that was found with 109 bullet holes in it, while another man, 22-year-old Pearse Jordan, was shot in the back by a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The court has needed more than a year of deliberations since a hearing on 4 April last year.
In June last year, the court ruled that Britain had violated the right to a fair trial of Gerard Magee, who was convicted of trying to launch an attack on the Army in 1990. Mr Magee said that he was forced to make a confession and that he was denied proper access to a lawyer. The European Court of Human Rights is a body set up by the pan-European Council of Europe. It sits in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.
