By Tony O’Reilly
A referral to the Police Ombudsman by former chief constable George Hamilton led to a shocking discovery resulting in two serving officers being investigated for sharing pictures of a dead body is ongoing.
A file on the two officers, under investigation for a raft of offences, has now been sent to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS).
The demented conduct of serving police officers in the UK has been topical in the British media in the last year, ever since it was reported the ex police officers Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33 took pictures of murdered Wembley sisters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. The deranged officers were both jailed for two years and nine months last December, after they photographed the bodies, and shared them in two WhatsApp groups, calling the victims “dead birds”. Prosecutors in that case said the offending stripped the victims of dignity in death’.
A decision on whether to prosecute the bent cops, who are yet to be named, is expected within months in a case that has been under investigation since 2017.
Offences being probed include allegations that one of the officers took pictures of a body, having been called to a property where a suicide had taken place.
Distressed relatives were later alerted that a picture of their loved one had been placed in a social media group chat. The pictures were graphic and featured speech bubbles Photoshopped over the young man’s face, and his clothing tampered with.
The prohibited pictures were identified after the Police Ombudsman was called in to investigate the online activities of several officers, the pictures, along with a number of other alleged offences, were identified.
Police also discovered that one man posing as an officer on Twitter was a civilian with no policing experience. He was investigated by the PSNI as the Ombudsman had no remit over him. A file on that has been sent to the PPS.
The officers at the centre of the investigation have been suspended on full pay for almost five years, and critics have queried the duration of the investigation.
Former Constable, George Hamilton, last month spoke about the 2015 murder of Kevin McGuigan, revealing that the police had indeed believed that “senior republicans” were involved in the murder and that the killers were current members, neither of which the PSNI revealed. He said the murder happened with the concurrence of senior figures within “the republican movement”, he explicitly said the murder was approved by senior IRA figures.