Police inquest files on shooting of Maze escapee potentially ‘under-redacted’

Police files disclosed to a coroner investigating the death of a man shot while trying to escape the Maze prison were potentially not redacted fully, a court has heard.

Hugh Gerard Coney was shot in the back by a British soldier as he and other internees tried to escape the Long Kesh facility in 1974.

The republican internee had used a tunnel to escape the prison camp and was running across a field close to the perimeter fence when he was shot.

A fresh inquest into the killing of the 24-year-old from Coalisland, Co Tyrone, is due to be heard next February.

A pre-inquest review on Monday was told that issues around “under-redaction” had caused a hold up in the processing of disclosing files held by the PSNI.

Donal Lunny QC, representing the PSNI and Ministry of Defence, said the issue related to documents deemed non-sensitive.

“There might be a little bit of additional redaction required if there have been, as the coroners’ service suggests, some under-redactions,” he said.

The barrister said it would take four weeks or less to amend the documents “depending on what the extent of the under-redactions is”.

Mr Lunny said he understood some of the issues related to ciphers used for weapon serial numbers and also the names of other escapees.

“That can be slightly more time consuming than simple redaction to make sure they’re all ciphered consistently across the various documents,” he said.

Coroner Anne Louise Toal said she understood it would not be “overly onerous” to address the issues.

The coroner gave the PSNI four weeks to complete the task as she stressed the importance of the next of kin being able to access the redacted documents before the summer recess.

A further preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 6.