

Two investigative journalists who worked on Alex Gibney’s documentary about the Loughinisland massacre in Northern Ireland have been arrested over the alleged theft of confidential documents.



Officers from Durham constabulary detained Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey in Belfast on Friday over the use of material allegedly stolen from the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (PONI).

Gibney said the arrests were outrageous and that police should instead have reopened the investigation into the 1994 massacre in which loyalists murdered six Catholics.

In a tweet, he said the film had exposed the failure of police to properly investigate the massacre. “Police reaction? Re-open murder investigation? No. Arrest the truth tellers,” the Oscar-winning director wrote.

The documentary, released last year, cited evidence of blunders, coverup and collusion between police and the Ulster Volunteer Force killers.

PONI officers reported the alleged theft to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which then asked Durham police to conduct an independent investigation.

Detectives from Durham arrested the journalists after searching two homes and a business premises in Belfast with the help of PSNI officers. They seized documents and computer equipment.

Birney and McCaffrey, both veteran, award-winning journalists, were being questioned at Musgrave police station in Belfast.

They were released on bail just before 9pm, about 14 hours after being arrested. McCaffrey said the arrests were “not fair”, adding: “And it’s an attack on the press, everybody should realise. It’s us today, tomorrow it could be you.”

Birney said it had been a “very difficult day”.

Earlier, a Durham constabulary spokesman described the investigation as complex. “The terms of reference given to our inquiry were clear in that the investigation is solely into the alleged theft of material from PONI. The theft of these documents potentially puts lives at risk and we will follow the evidence wherever it leads us,” he said.

Gibney, from the US, has won multiple Emmys for documentaries about Enron, Scientology and other topics. He won an Oscar for a 2007 film about an Afghan taxi driver murdered at a US military base.

No Stone Unturned begins with a chilling reconstruction of the night of 18 June 1994 when three men in balaclavas entered the Heights pub in Loughinisland, a village in County Down, and opened fire. The bar was packed because the Republic of Ireland were playing Italy in one of the opening games of the football World Cup in the US.

Eleven of the 24 men present were shot in the back. Six died. The oldest was Barney Greene, 87, the youngest, Adrian Rogan, 34.

The attack, which occurred just a few months before a ceasefire was declared by paramilitaries on both sides, remains unsolved despite bountiful evidence identifying suspects and linking them to members of the security forces.

The documentary focuses on the aftermath and the murky contracts made between the British authorities and the paramilitary killers they recruited as agents. It names the main suspects.

“Rather than reopen a purposefully bungled murder investigation, the PSNI moves to arrest those who revealed police corruption and incompetence. ‘Protect and Serve; turns out to mean: ‘circle the paddy wagons’,” Gibney tweeted on Friday.

Brian Gormally, the director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice advocacy group, said the arrests interfered with journalists’ freedom of expression.

“It is now up to the police to demonstrate that this interference was reasonable, proportionate, for a legitimate aim and necessary in a democratic society. Unless they can do that, their actions amount to a violation of human rights and an assault on the freedom of the press.”

Clare Rogan, a spokesperson for the Loughinsland families, condemned the arrests. “The British government has systematically denied and continues to cover up its role in the murder of six people in the Heights bar. Today’s arrests show the lengths of desperation that the British government and state forces are prepared to go to, in order to stifle the truth about what happened in Loughinisland.”

The National Union of Journalists expressed “grave concern” at the arrests. Seamus Dooley, its acting general secretary, said: “The documentary raises serious questions about the police investigation into Loughinisland and it is deeply worrying that the focus of police attention should be on journalists rather than on the issues raised in the documentary.

“The protection of journalistic sources of confidential information is of vital importance and journalists must be free to operate in the public interest without police interference.”