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| Thursday, 10 February 2005 |
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Britain apologises for false IRA bomb convictions LONDON, Wednesday (Reuters) Three decades after being falsely jailed for detonating IRA bombs at English pubs, the British government apologised on Wednesday to 11 people in one of the nation's worst miscarriages of justice. Four of them - the so-called "Guildford Four" - achieved international fame when their wrongful 15-year jailing was dramatised in the 1993 film "In The Name Of The Father." "I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and such an injustice," Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a brief television statement. "That's why I'm making this apology today. They deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated," he added. Blair was speaking as some of the former prisoners, their relatives and campaigners, came to London to pressure the government for a first, high-profile apology. The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were blamed for the 1974 pub bombs in the southern English towns of Guildford and Woolwich that killed a total of seven people. Appeal courts overturned the convictions of the four in 1989, and the seven in 1991, amid allegations of falsified evidence and confessions obtained under coercion. |
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