UK security services helped devise act that gave amnesty over Troubles killings

The British security services were involved in formulating the controversial Legacy Act, which offered an amnesty to soldiers and paramilitiaries despite MI5’s role in many killings during the Northern Ireland Troubles, it can be revealed. The presence of policing and state agency figures among a secret policymaking group involved in devising the act – a fact established through an investigation by Belfast-based newsletter the Detail and shared with the Guardian – has angered victims’ groups already critical of the legislation. The 2023 act’s conditional immunity, which the current government removed after a vote in January, was opposed by all political parties in Northern Ireland , albeit sometimes for different reasons. Daniel Holder, from the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), a Belfast-based NGO, fought an eight-month battle to have documents relating to the legacy senior working group released after his freedom of information requests were initially rebuffed. Holder, who shared the documents marked “official secret” with the Detail, said: “It is only now that some detail of the group has emerged. The legacy investigations senior working group was set up behind closed doors to assist the development of what became Boris Johnson’s government’s notorious Legacy Act. …