Suspected Ulster Terrorist Hill Cleared After 20 Years

Paul Hill, one of the “Guildford Four” whose story is recounted in the movie “In the Name of the Father,” was freed Thursday by an appeals court in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which quashed his conviction for the murder of an ex-British soldier 20 years ago.

The Belfast-born Hill, 39, is an Irish republican sympathizer who is married to Courtney Kennedy, a daughter of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy. As he sat in the courtroom listening to the reading of the 42-page judgment that freed him, Hill was accompanied by his wife, her mother, Ethel, and a family cousin, Father Michael Kennedy. The Kennedy family had worked vigorously for his exoneration.

Hill had been arrested by police in the southern English county of Surrey in November, 1974, in the Irish Republican Army bombing of pubs in the city of Guildford and London district of Woolwich. Under interrogation, he confessed to the IRA killing of the ex-soldier, Brian Shaw, four months earlier.

On Thursday, the appeals court declared the confession inadmissible because it had been taken under duress. A police witness had testified that a fellow interrogator had pointed an empty pistol at Hill during questioning and pulled the trigger--an act that Northern Ireland Chief Justice Brian Hutton called “a disgraceful and grossly improper action which clearly constituted inhuman treatment.”

The court quashed the conviction because, it said, the only evidence against him was his confession and that was tainted. But the court also said Hill had lied about some aspects of the case.

It was the second case involving Hill’s mistreatment by British law enforcement officials. Hill served 15 years in prison for the Guildford-Woolwich bombings before his release in 1989, the result of a long international campaign proclaiming his innocence. His three co-defendants also were freed because of tainted testimony during their arrest and trial.

The Guildford case raised serious questions about British police interrogation methods and the justice system’s handling of alleged IRA offenses, especially in the emotional atmosphere of a bombing campaign that took 29 lives in 1974.

After listening to the judgment freeing him, Hill said Thursday: “I want to live a normal life now. I’ve been in limbo for a long time.”

Shaw’s widow, Maureen Hall, said she was disappointed with the verdict. She said the “Kennedy circus” had put pressure on the judges to rule in Hill’s favor.