“Exactly the same forensic scientists who produced the wrongful conviction of Guiseppe Conlon, the Maguire family and of Danny McNamee, and had been stood down for the role they played. Yet here they were. Without them, there wouldn’t have been a prosecution, far less a conviction in Lockerbie.”
“What shocked me most was that I thought that all that had been gone through on Guildford and Birmingham, the one thing that had been achieved was that nobody would be convicted again on bad science. But yet in the Lockerbie case, it isn’t just the same bad science, it is the same bad scientists.”
Gareth Peirce — Solicitor for the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six
In the Name of the Father is a 1993 Irish-British-American biographical courtroom drama film co-written and directed by Jim Sheridan. It is based on the true life story of the Guildford Four, four people falsely convicted of the 1974 IRA’s Guildford pub bombings, which killed four off-duty British soldiers and a civilian. Gareth Peirce (Emma Thompson), a campaigning lawyer who has been investigating the case on behalf of Giuseppe, has a breakthrough when she tries to access Giuseppe’s file and is able to look instead at Gerry’s. She finds vital police documents in the file that are marked “Not to be shown to the Defence”. During the course of their appeal, the production of these documents leads to a triumphant scene in court when Peirce produces the evidence that the police have been lying throughout about the existence of a witness who had provided Conlon with an alibi during their initial investigation. This leads to the overturning of the verdict and immediate release of the Guildford Four.
A self-confessed IRA bomb maker who has said he was part of the group responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings has issued an apology. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading →
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