It wasn’t quite perfect because the security forces kept the hospital under observation for about two weeks before finally they secured a result. The operation was a large one, probably involving more than twenty-four members of the SAS, Londonderry Detachment of 14 Intelligence Company and SB. They used at least five unmarked cars.
The SB expected the attack to take place at around 8.30 a.m. when shifts changed and the man they knew to be the target arrived by bus at the hospital. The IRA team would attack in a way employed by the Derry Brigade before. On 28 March 1982, RUC Inspector Norman Duddy had left the Strand Road Presbyterian church with his two sons. Two hooded terrorists had appeared on a motorcycle. They shot Inspector Duddy as he got into his car, leaving the children with their mortally wounded father.
At 7 a.m. on 6 December 1984 a group of SAS and surveillance soldiers were briefed at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, by a major, later referred to as ‘Soldier F’. It is probable that he was either the Army special forces Liaison Officer to the TCG or the OC of 14 Company. The soldiers must have received much the same briefing as they had during previous days, when they had been on the same assignment. Soldier F said he told them their task was ‘to abort if possible a terrorist attack and to apprehend the terrorist or terrorists involved’.
The men then went to Gransha in their collection of unmarked cars – two Fiats, a Volkswagen Jetta, a Capri and a Toyota. Some were armed with a 9 mm pistol and an HK53, others with a pistol and an MP5K. The Heckler and Koch MP5K is a shortened version of the 9 mm sub-machine-gun used by the SAS at the Iranian embassy and can be concealed under clothing.
Two IRA men – Daniel Doherty, twenty-three, from the Creggan estate, and William Fleming, nineteen, a resident of the Waterside district – had drawn weapons from an IRA quartermaster. They were carrying a holdall with a revolver, an automatic pistol, gloves and balaclavas as they climbed on to their motorcycle, which had been stolen some time before. Doherty took the handlebars, with Fleming riding pillion.
As they made their way into the hospital grounds their progress was observed by the soldiers in unmarked cars, who passed information between them by radio. According to the intelligence specialist quoted earlier, another SAS man had got on to the bus on which the UDR man was travelling.
The soldiers said that, as the motorcycle came into the hospital, Fleming had a pistol in his hand. This was disputed later, at the inquest. The soldiers say they shouted at the men to stop. They did not do so and Soldier A, at the wheel of a blue Fiat, drove his car at the IRA men. The motorbike was rammed with such force that Fleming’s right leg was shattered and he fell to the ground. Among the exhibits listed by the police Scene of Crime Officer was ‘LS11 Sample of fleshy material’, which had been ‘recovered from the offside front wing’ of Soldier A’s Fiat.
Soldier A fired at Fleming with his 9 mm pistol. Soldier B used his pistol and then got his HK53 out of the car and fired it. Soldier B and Soldier C continued to fire at Doherty as he tried to escape on the motorcycle. Soldier C fired at the bike, ‘thinking my own life and that of Soldier B was in immediate danger’. He emptied the thirty-round magazine of his MP5K at Doherty.
Some fifty-nine rounds were fired in a few moments. Doherty was hit nineteen times, falling from the bike. Fleming had taken four rounds. Both men died. Doherty left a wife and an eight-month-old boy.
There was a strong public reaction after the deaths. The IRA claimed Doherty had been hit thirty-eight times and Fleming thirty, allegations exposed as false by the post-mortem examinations. A local unionist politician described the shootings as ‘an early Christmas present’. Neil Kinnock, the opposition Labour Party leader, called for an inquiry, justifying his request by saying, ‘It is because of fear that there might have been a change of policy on “shoot-to-kill” and I want clarification on that policy.’ Douglas Hurd, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, denied that there had been any change in security policy.
At the men’s funerals there were scuffles and confrontations with the police. As at Tony MacBride’s funeral, the RUC intervened to try to prevent paramilitary displays. A senior republican says that from late 1983 the police took a more active role in trying to prevent paramilitary ‘honour guards’ firing shots at funerals.
20The Strabane Shootings
In February 1985 the Int and Sy Group went into action again. It was to be the fourth occasion in five months in which members of the unit were involved in a fatal shooting incident. However, it would grow in reputation to be the most controversial of the killings. As in Tamnamore in October 1984 and in Kesh and Londonderry in December, the events which took place in Strabane resulted from the exploitation of informer intelligence.
An IRA ASU in the predominantly Catholic town of Strabane was given the assignment of attacking an RUC vehicle on patrol. The ASU was well armed for the task, with anti-armour grenades which had been specially developed and manufactured by the Provisionals’ technical experts. They had also hidden near
