Starmer Waiving The Rules | Leonard Peltier - Going Home

Léargas: A Podcast by Gerry Adams

Starmer Waiving The Rules.

According to the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer his government is looking at "every conceivable way" to prevent me and at least 300 other people from receiving compensation for wrongful arrest and imprisonment in the 1970s. This issue of compensation arises from the decision by the British Supreme Court in May 2020 that the Interim Custody Order (ICO) or internment order issued against me was unlawful.

Internment was demanded by the Unionist government in 1971 and imposed by the British on 9 August that year. It had been used in every decade since partition in 1920. Internment saw thousands of armed troops smash their way into nationalist homes to arrest 342 men and boys. They were dragged from their beds and many were beaten. Fourteen – the Hooded Men - were subjected to days of sustained torture. 25 people were killed in the following four days. In Ballymurphy in west Belfast eleven local citizens, including a priest and mother of eight, were killed by the Paras in the Ballymurphy Massacre. Five months later the Paras attacked an anti-internment march in Derry and killed 14 people. Bloody Sunday was another of many dark days in the conflict. In July 1972 another five citizens, this time in Springhill, were killed by the British Army. They included another priest and a thirteen-year-old girl.

Leonard Peltier - Going Home

Leonard Peltier is a native American activist. He has spent almost 50 years in prison in the USA for a crime he has always denied and which many, including some involved in jailing him, have long believed he was innocent of. A short time before he left office US President Joe Biden commuted Leonard’s life sentence to one of home confinement in his tribal homeland in North Dakota. Leonard is due to be released on 18 February.