£8,000 for widow of Northern Ireland riot

A woman widowed when her husband was killed during a riot in Northern Ireland six years ago was awarded £8,000 in damages yesterday after a European court ruled his human rights had been violated.

American-born Teresa McShane won a judgment against the British Government from the European Court of Human Rights that the death of her husband, Dermot, had not been properly investigated. Mr McShane, 35, was killed when an Army armoured vehicle rammed hoardings he was sheltering behind during disorder in Londonderry described then as the worst for 25 years.

In Strasbourg, the court ruled unanimously that his right to life had been violated and the authorities had wrongly tried to interfere with the efforts of Mrs McShane's lawyers to bring the case.

The court stopped short of ruling on who was to blame for Mr McShane's death despite his wife's claim that he was killed either deliberately or by unnecessary use of force by the security forces.

But campaigners backing Mrs McShane's case insisted it was an important victory. Paul Mageean, of Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, said: "It is a salutary reminder to government that, even in the midst of conflict, the state must act within the rule of law."

Mr McShane had been with his wife and friends in a Londonderry bar when rioting broke out in July 1996 at the height of unrest caused by a ban on the Orange Order march at Drumcree.

As the group left the bar they were caught up in the disturbances and took shelter from plastic baton rounds by crouching behind a skip and the hoardings.

An Royal Ulster Constabulary inspector told the driver of an armoured Saxon vehicle to advance on the hoarding to push the barricade back. As it did, Mr McShane fell and was crushed under the wheels.

The Strasbourg court found that a subsequent investigation breached the Human Rights Act on a number of levels, including the fact that the death was not investigated by independent officers and that the soldier who drove the vehicle was not required to give evidence at an inquest.

As well as receiving £8,000 in damages, Mrs McShane was awarded £8,000 in legal costs. Separate actions brought by Mrs McShane against the Ministry of Defence, the police and the Northern Ireland Secretary are pending.