State and church protected terrorist priest

“Claudy, a grotesque perversion of justice,” headlines the Belfast Telegraph. Northern Ireland is reeling from an official report published August 24 that confirms that a Catholic priest was involved in the IRA bombing in the town of Claudy, Co. Derry in July 1972, which claimed 9 victims. In one of the bloodiest years of the Northern Irish conflict, British intelligence suspected that Fr James Chesney was the local IRA’s quartermaster and "director of operations." Nevertheless, William Whitelaw, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, decided in consultation with the Catholic Church hierarchy that the priest should not be arrested but transferred across the border into the Irish Republic. The Belfast daily notes that the report reveals “the profound moral and political dilemma which faced all those involved - the arrest of a Catholic clergyman would likely have inflamed an already dire political and security situation, but the failure to apprehend him risked hampering the search for justice for those who were killed."