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Maguire Seven
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Maguire Seven case was an infamous event of wrongful conviction in the United Kingdom. Their story, along with that of the Guildford Four, is told in the film In the Name of the Father.
The seven, members of the same family, were falsely accused of running a bomb-making factory for the Provisional IRA in the early 1970s. One of them, Giuseppe Conlon, was arrested when he travelled from Belfast to England to try to help his son, Gerard Conlon (a member of the Guildford Four). He later died in prison, due to breathing difficulties; the rest of the Maguire Seven had their convictions quashed in 1991, a while after their prison sentences had been ended.
It is alleged that members of the London Metropolitan Police beat confessions out of some of the members, and withheld information that would have cleared them. An IRA gang admitted the bombings when apprehended, and informed the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions that they had wrongfully sentenced others for these crimes. With no corroborating evidence, no officers involved were charged with the perversion of the course of justice.
In 2005, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair issued an apology for the miscarriage, on television. The Speaker of the House Michael Martin refused to allow the Prime Minister to use his weekly Question Time to make the speech from the Dispatch Box.
- Obituary of Sister Sarah Clarke, a key figure in the campaign to free the Maguire Seven and other wrongfully imprisoned IRA suspects, which tells the story of the wrongful imprisonments.
- Miscarriages of justice