Austen Morgan: Operation Kenova exposed not just the weaknesses of a Chief Constable but the Northern Irish criminal justice system

Dr Austen Morgan is a barrister at 33 Bedford Row Chambers.  He is the author of: Pretence: why the United Kingdom needs a written constitution, London 2023.

Of the senior British police officers involved historically in Northern Ireland (‘NI’), the most unfortunate has been Jon Boutcher, the current chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (‘PSNI’).

This is because – I submit – of his determined overreach as a Dickson-of-Dock-Green-type office holder on government policy on the legacy of the troubles; that is for ministers and parliament – basic constitutional law.

Back in July 2005, as a silver commander in Scotland Yard (with Cressida Dick as gold), he was responsible collectively for the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes – a Brazilian electrician unconnected with Islamic terrorism – at Stockwell tube station.  The story of the metropolitan police as Keystone cops (with the police shooters having to stop for petrol for their jalopy) may be followed in the Strasbourg judgment:

Readers in NI, particularly former and current police officers (who may not have done that badly despite criticism), may find it professionally interesting.

Bizarrely, the human rights court found no breach of article 2 substantive (the right to life) in the de Menezes case, in order to dismiss an application under article 2 procedural (effective investigation).  Met officers shoot Brazilian electricians, don’t they?

Scroll forward to 2016, when Jon Boutcher, then chief constable of Bedfordshire, was asked by the PSNI to investigate Freddie Scappaticci, a IRA enforcer who voluntarily doubled as an army agent.  Thus was established operation Kenova (to which was later attached a number of other police investigations ordered by activist courts).

Operation Kenova was to take over nine years, and cost just under £50 million.  It reported initially in October 2023, and finally in December 2025.  These twin peaks produced a mole: the extradition, unusually for Dublin, of Martin McCauley, of Columbian FARC fame, in January 2025, for the murder of three police officers in Lurgan in 1982, for which he is currently on bail; if McCauley ever attends court, he will be facing a maximum sentence of two years for three murders.

Boutcher did try and prosecute the deputy director of public prosecutions in Belfast, for misfeasance in a public office – namely not doing as she was requested.  He failed to get Scappaticci on a rap of animal pornography in London, the latter having lived after 2003 under the protection of the army (dying in 2023 as Frank Cowley in Guildford, Surrey).  The IRA never caught up with him.

Boutcher had reached out to victims from 2016 (of whom there were approximately 3,750 in the NI troubles, 1968-98).  His interim report was dedicated sentimentally to some of them.  He seemed not to appreciate the basic statistics, nor the law: 60 per cent killed by republicans unlawfully; 30 per cent by loyalists unlawfully; with the state killing ten per cent, many lawfully.

Scappaticci’s victims, murdered by the IRA, were – in provincial argot – ‘touts’.  This did not inhibit Sinn Féin, and especially John Finucane MP (abstaining at Westminster in person), from embracing their memory, courtesy of the BBC.  That is the sort of weird place NI is permitted to remain.

The chief constable, in his two reports, shows himself to be a grand old duke of York: in his police green uniform, he marched the victims (including their family successors), and the legacy practitioners, up to the top of the hill with the promise of prosecution;  and then he marched them down again, save for the relatives of the three murdered police officers, who might see Martin McCauley – if he does not possess a comfort letter – gaoled for a symbolic time.

The final report – doused embarrassingly in Boutcher self-regarding – included:

‘Kenova has from the outset put the interests of victims and families at the heart of its approach.  We learned that an outcome through the criminal justice process may in fact not always be achievable or even what is desired.  Kenova detectives prioritised listening and being responsive to questions unanswered for decades.’

So, why did they submit dozens of files to the public prosecution service, only to have them rejected as not meeting the legal test – all of which was predictable?  The process has become the punishment.

Jon Boutcher, like a first-year law student at Queen’s university, Belfast, covered himself in article 2 warpaint.  There are 43 such references in the interim report, and 15 in the final report.  The local human rights commission – a provincially woke body imagining itself to be metropolitan – is cited as sole legal authority.  There is a crass example of legal juvenilia in note 69 of the final report (no article 2 obligation, contra the chief constable’s legal experts disputing the supreme court, means…no article 2 obligation period).

Few yet appreciate the corruption of NI’s criminal justice system from 1997, by principally Tony Blair and his number 10 amigo Jonathan Powell: statutory amnesties to secure decommissioning of terrorist weapons and the revealing of ‘the disappeared’; the early release of terrorist prisoners by parliament (the origin of the two-year rule also applying to state forces); the granting of immunity to witnesses to the Saville, and other, tribunals; above all, the administrative scheme, from 2000 to 2014 (if not continuing), of comfort letters issued to republican supporters of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness (not loyalists and not dissident republicans).

229 IRA prisoners were released at the beginning of the secret peace process after the 1998 Belfast agreement; subsequently, at least 187 of another 228 Provos were given John Downey-type letters (as revealed in his aborted 2014 Old Bailey trial).

In November 2023, Jon Boutcher took over the PSNI as chief constable.  In NI, it is the policing board – including political parties sitting beside independents – which appoints the chief constable.  Whatever of the interim report (to himself), he chaired the press conference when his deputy, Sir Iain Livingstone, presented the final report recently.

Political parties, practising clientelist politics and fearing relatives in their electoral catchments, wanted to hide behind Jon Boutcher, with his evangelical outreach to victims.  They give the impression of loving him, just as he talks about loving the people.  It is a sick and sad situation.

Few appreciate that NI is now run by an alternative justice system, with: the police ombudsman; the human rights and equality commissions (two when one would do, as in London); a political chief constable like Jon Boucher; and, above all, the NI judiciary, under Dame Siobhan Keegan, the lady chief justice, engaging in separatist decision-making on legacy, since Sir Declan Morgan retired as the top judge in September 2021; the result is lawfare, with republicans amnestied, police and soldiers in the firing line in full-scale show trials, and loyalists accused of collusion.

The only thing standing between civilization and barbarism is the UK supreme court, which seems to have spotted the provincial undermining of the rule of law, with a succession of ongoing case: McQuillan (December 2021); Dalton (October 2023); Thompson, just decided in December 2025 (when Jon Boutcher got a roasting for trying to destroy ‘neither confirm nor deny’); Dillon heard in October 2025, with judgment next year; Brown forthcoming; to say nothing of the likelihood of Clonoe making it to the supreme court, a NI judge having held that the SAS should have invited a heavily-armed IRA gang politely to surrender.

In 2023, Brandon Lewis MP secured the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act.  It led to the first successful legacy body, the international commission on reconciliation and information recovery, led by….Sir Declan Morgan.  This is the statute Hilary Benn, on behalf of Sir Keir Starmer (with Jonathan Powell back in the shadows), is attempting – not very successfully – to repeal and replace.

One thing is predictable after the fiasco of the failed Kenova prosecutions: there will be no call for Sir Jon Boutcher to arise; much less Lord Boutcher of victimhood to don the ermine and swear allegiance.