Loyalist informers smuggled weapons used in dozens of Troubles murders

In a devastating report that is likely to challenge previous official narratives of the nature of the conflict, Dr Michael Maguire, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, said that during this period special branch detectives concealed information about loyalist terrorists from colleagues who were investigating those crimes.

Furthermore, Maguire said he had "no hesitation” in concluding that police colluded with the men responsible for a Loyalist gun attack on a bar in the village of Loughinisland that was packed with men watching Ireland play Italy in the 1994 World Cup. Six men – including an 87-year-old – were killed and five wounded.

Twenty-four hours before members of the gang were to be arrested, they received a tip-off from a police officer: a crime that was not itself investigated.

Further acts of collusion in that case included "the protection of informants through wilful acts and the passive turning a blind eye; fundamental failures in the initial police investigation and the destruction of police records”, Maguire said.

The automatic rifle that was used in that attack was part of the arsenal that had been bought, imported and distributed with the help of police informers, he said.

One police file of information about the Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen who were responsible for some of the subsequent killings was marked "NDD/Slow Waltz”, which Maguire said meant no downward dissemination, share slowly – if at all.

Although the purpose of Maguire’s investigation was to examine the failures in the police investigation that followed the Loughinisland murders, his 160-page report also examines the way in which loyalists were able to smuggle enormous numbers of weapons into Northern Ireland in late 1987, and the way in which they were then used in a series of other killings, many of which were inadequately investigated.

With many in Northern Ireland unable to agree about the true nature of the conflict – or even the language that should be used to describe it – the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, spoke in a speech earlier this year of a "pernicious counter-narrative” that falsely claims that misconduct by the police and armed forces was rife.

While Maguire’s report stresses that many in the police have "worked tirelessly” to bring the Loughinisland killers to justice, its damning conclusions will be seized upon by those who condemned Villiers’ comments, and who argue that security force collusion with loyalist terrorism was a central feature of the conflict.