- Term time - 28th June 2024
- Murder most foul… - 27th June 2024
- Vote for me, if you can afford it! - 26th June 2024
Disturbing reports about the unsolved murder of a man who grew up in Wales, prompted another search for justice after a British soldier was shot dead by the IRA when he was at home, it’s emerged.
21 year old Pte Tony Harrison was killed in 1991 in East Belfast while he was at home with his fiancée, and now his brother has said he will try to seek the truth about what happened, after he saw news reports about the death of Daniel Morgan.
After the killing of Mr Morgan (who grew up in Monmouthshire), the police formally admitted to wrong doing, and enormous damages were to be paid out.
Scotland Yard said it would pay a £2 million settlement after admitting that the investigation into the murder more than 35 years ago was corrupt and incompetent.
Now Pte Harrison’s brother Andy Seaman has declared: “I thought, other families have been able to hold parts of the state to account…and I’d like the same for us”.
After he saw the reports about Mr Morgan, Mr Seaman contacted the Centre for Military Justice to ask if it would accept Pte Harrison’s case.
He has told BBC News NI that his brother had missed “major family milestones”, adding: “I was only 13 when my brother passed away, my kids will never meet their uncle.
“All I’m asking is for the questions as to why the people who didn’t give him that chance have been allowed to kind of walk, walk free for so long, without any explanation from the authorities as to why that has been allowed to happen.”
Now those key questions will be asked once more, and reports about the death of a man from Wales are the driving force.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, has formally apologised “unequivocally and unreservedly” for failing to bring the killers of Mr Morgan to justice and said the family had been “repeatedly and inexcusably let down”.
Among other failings detailed in a 2021 report investigating the case was a “totally inadequate” handling of the murder scene – which was not searched and left unguarded; alibis were not sought for the suspects, while evidence of police involvement in the killing was not properly pursued.
Mr Morgan (who worked as a private investigator) was found dead in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, South London in March 1987 with an axe embedded in his head, but no one has ever been convicted of the terrible crime.
The Times reported that Mr Morgan’s family will receive one of the biggest payouts in British policing history.
The official inquiry into the scandal found that the Met was “institutionally corrupt” and its commissioner at the time, Cressida Dick, was personally censured for obstruction.
Now, perhaps, this awful incident may lead to obstruction being eased in another case.
It seems strange to think that good might come out of a man found with an axe in his head in a pub car park…
The memories of our Editor (Welshman Phil Parry’s) astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which he has exposed numerous wrong-doings by the authorities) as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how during his 40 year career , for Phil spotting growing trends has always been paramount, and now this is underlined by ever more evidence emerging (and books being written) about the strong links between major UK institutions, including some in Wales, and the slave trade.
