Although the charges still hang over his head like the sword of Damocles, we're sure that Chris Ward is a very happy young man this morning to be back in the bosom of his family for Christmas. A happy holiday season with his friends and loved ones is the least he deserves after what he's been through.
The harrowing ordeal he suffered at the hands of the robbers a year ago was as nothing compared to what he was subjected to by the PSNI in their hysterical attempts to put someone, anyone, in the frame for the £26m Northern Bank heist. For fully eight days he was held, repeatedly confronted with the tapes that PSNI spooks had amassed during the bugging of his home in Belfast and a holiday apartment in the Canary Islands. And what an appalling feeling it must be to realise that your every word and action has been recorded, your most private conversations and most intimate moments violated by faceless spies whose agenda has absolutely nothing to do with policing and justice, and everything to do with double-cross and destruction.
Of course, the risible charade that has been the investigation into the bank raid is just one of a number of infuriating and confusing issues with which we're confronted in this hall of mirrors that the British have constructed in the North. It's not that long ago that the vexed question of the On the Runs seemed to have been dealt with on the basis of an agreement painstakingly hammered out at Weston Park. Then the subterfuge and trickery began and before we knew it the British were proposing that its agents who had been involved in murder and targeting would be allowed to slip through cracks deliberately inserted in the proposed legislation. A further example of British chicanery and bad faith, and one which has prompted Sinn Féin to reject the suggested OTR arrangements. The issue will have to be dealt with, of course, and it is to be hoped that when the next round of negotiations on the matter takes place, republicans will have learned their lesson.
And a word of advice for the SDLP in their unseemly efforts to present themselves as the voice of the victims of servants of the British state. A bit more of the energy and passion that they have recently discovered would have been nice back in the dark days when those victims they now claim to speak for were sidelined and reviled by the entire political establishment, with the exception of Sinn Féin. And the recent failure of the SDLP to send a single representative to a victims' meeting at Stormont suggests that the party's sudden concern for victims of state violence might be more opportunistic than idealistic. It is one thing to shout loudly about victims in the media; it is another thing entirely to battle tirelessly on their behalf for years on end and when the media doesn't care.
Then there is the continuing saga of the 'Stormont spy ring' and, last week, the outing of Denis Donaldson as a British spy for more than 20 years. So convoluted and macchiavelian is this entire episode that anyone who claims to know what's going on is either a liar or a fool. What we do know is that the British have continued to claim that an IRA spy ring existed at Stormont, that 1,000 pages of sensitive information were discovered in West Belfast.
That the material was found in the house of a British spy might seem to negate that claim, but British security sources explained that one away by explaining to their favourite journalists that Mr Donaldson hadn't bothered to tell his handlers about the 'Stormont IRA spy ring', and that the whistle had been blown on that operation by another deep-cover agent with Sinn Féin who has not yet been uncovered. And right on cue, the PSNI this week visited a number of blameless, high-profile republicans to tell them that the PSNI had information they were about to be named as spies.
When it comes to espionage and dirty tricks, the British lead the world. And yet, despite the lessons of history, the vast bulk of the media in Ireland scoff at suggestions that any spy ring that did exist here was a British one, or that the British are continuing to engage in a determined campaign to undermine and damage the republican movement. Of course, in many instances this has more to do with big business considerations, and increasingly the media agenda is driven by the commercial interests of owners and conviction journalism is an endangered species.
Which is why we would all do well to take a step back from the hype and spin that we've seen on the television and in the newspapers in recent days and examine in a cold and reasoned way what evidence is before us, what we know and what we don't know. When people in power will say only, 'trust us, we know', then we should do the opposite.
