A REPORT into one of the most horrific attacks of the Troubles has been slammed by victims who say it has left major questions on the IRA atrocity unanswered.
A huge incendiary bomb sent a fireball roaring through a dinner dance at the La Mon House hotel outside Belfast in February 1978 killing 12 people and leaving many others with devastating injuries.
But survivors of the attack said they were angry that a Historical Enquiries Team (HET) review of the original investigation offered little new information and raised fresh questions over how key evidence had apparently disappeared.
Three of the families left devastated by the night of horror at La Mon spoke out after waiting two years for the HET report and they questioned if a blind eye was effectively being turned to IRA attacks of the past to avoid unsettling the peace process.
Interviews with IRA members, original papers from up to 100 detectives and notes about a warning call and a car used by the bombers could not be found. Campaigners asked if other items of evidence referred to in the report were still in existence, and if so, if they could be DNA tested.
Jim Mills, whose wife and sister were murdered, said of the report produced by the HET: “It was just a farce. A waste of two years. Building ourselves up - and we’re not able to cope with all this pressure - and you go after two years, and absolutely nothing.
“You could have went to the library and looked it all up in the newspapers. That’s just how bad it is.
“It is ridiculous, You can’t be any more let down than I am. As far as I am concerned they told us nothing whatsoever.
“We would like to find out who done it. We weren’t asking for an awful lot.
“They more or less know who done it, but they’re not allowed to tell because they haven’t been prosecuted.”
Billy McDowell and his wife were seriously injured in the blast, and he said of his dealings with the HET: “Each time we were hoping for some good news. In receiving the final report, we are disappointed to find that there is very little information that we didn’t already know about before they even started. A lot of questions are left unanswered.”
The victims of the La Mon atrocity, all Protestants, had been attending the annual dinner dance of the Irish Collie Club, and included three married couples.
West Belfast man Robert Murphy was sentenced to life imprisonment for manslaughter in 1981. He was released in 1995 and died in 2006. A second man was acquitted.
- Read more detailed coverage in Friday’s News Letter