Interim Report

The Inquiry delivered an interim report containing one recommendation to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 29 January 2010.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has invited the Inquiry Chairman to arrange publication this morning (12 March 2010).

Interim Report by the Robert Hamill Inquiry to the

 Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

We recommend that the Director of Public Prosecutions should reconsider the decision whether or not to prosecute Robert Atkinson for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

It is right to give reasons which are sufficient to explain why we make this recommendation by way of an interim report but which do not infringe upon the responsibility of the Director and do nothing to jeopardise the fairness of any future proceedings, if there were to be such.

We have considered the factors which were taken into account by those who advised the Director that the prosecution should not proceed and what was in our view the appropriate context in which those factors should be seen in order to give them the weight appropriate to them. We have also considered factors which appear not to have been taken into account by those advising the Director and the weight we think should be attached to them. For the reasons already given we do not consider it appropriate in this interim report to say more.

Our reason for making this recommendation by way of an interim report is our recognition that if there is to be a reconsideration of the question of prosecution it is in the public interest that it should be treated as a matter of urgency.

The interim report in pdf.