Clara family ‘want to know who, and why?’
As the 48th anniversary of the Belturbet Bombing approaches, the family of one of the two teenagers killed in the explosion say they feel “extremely let down” by successive British and Irish governments and will not rest until they get justice.
Speaking in the wake of an RTE Investigates documentary 'Belturbet: the Bomb that Time Forgot' which aired on Monday night of this week, Susan Stanley said the death of her 16-year old brother, Patrick, in the explosion on December 28, 1972, continues to devastate her family to this day.
Patrick Stanley, from Clara, along with 15-year old Belturbet teenager Geraldine O’Reilly, lost their lives, and nine others were injured, when the no-warning bomb exploded in the centre of the county Cavan town.
Susan, who was born three months after the death of her brother, praised the RTE documentary into the bombing, which highlighted how high-level British security forces failed to act on credible intelligence about Loyalist terrorist activity, and found that both British and Irish governments still hold sealed files on the investigation.
The Stanley family are now calling for the immediate release of all files relating to the investigation into the Belturbet bombing, and say they are not prepared to wait another 37 years until the files are unsealed.
“As a family we feel so let down, and both the British and Irish Government made sure the files into the Belturbet bombing would be sealed until 2057 to make sure our parents would never find out what happened on that night or who was involved,” she says, adding that her family “just want to know who, and why” at this stage.
While she never knew her oldest brother, Susan Stanley says his death had “a huge affect” on her siblings, who were aged between 15 and three at the time of the bombing. “They had to carry that horrific tragedy through their lives with no acknowledgment and no grieving process and with the knowledge that nobody was ever brought to justice for the killing of Patrick,” she says.
Susan says it is also a source of “great sadness” to her family that both her parents passed away without ever getting justice for the death of their first-born child, and she says it is up to Patrick’s siblings to continue the fight for justice.
“We came from a very loving home and our parents were wonderful, despite the fact that they carried this great sadness inside of them, so we will not rest until we get justice for our brother,” vows Susan Stanley.