Chinook crash bereaved secure court hearing
A campaigning group for some of the families of those killed in the RAF Chinook crash on Scotland's Mull of Kintyre in 1994 have secured a court hearing in their bid for judicial review.
On 2 June 1994, the helicopter crashed on a remote hillside, killing all 29 people on board, including some of Britain’s most senior intelligence experts and four Special Forces crew.
The Chinook Justice Campaign was formed in 2024 by many of the families affected seeking a public inquiry to establish the full circumstances surrounding the accident.
It wants the British Government and its Ministry of Defence to unlock papers concerning the crash which have been sealed for 100 years.
The court hearing, now scheduled for July 14 at the High Court in London, will consider whether the families’ application should proceed.
A fortnight ago, former British defence secretary Sir Liam Fox delivered a letter to Downing Street, along with the families, calling for a fresh review into the case.
Lawyers for the families say one of the principal arguments to oppose the judicial review is that the case has been brought too late.
British Government lawyers claim it should have been brought in 2011 – when the two dead pilots, Flight Lieutenants Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, were cleared of gross negligence, and a fresh review found they should not have been blamed.
Airworthiness
The Chinook Justice Campaign says any move to time-bar the case would be an injustice, given that critical information concerning airworthiness and the circumstances leading up to the crash has only emerged gradually over many years and was never officially revealed.
The crash remains one of the RAF’s worst ever peacetime disasters.
Human rights lawyer Mark Stephens, (small picture), who represents the families, said: “At the heart of this case is a deeply troubling proposition. The facts were hidden, families were kept apart and they were not told the truth.
“The government’s position appears to be that families who were repeatedly misled and denied access to critical information should somehow have realised much earlier that they had grounds to challenge those decisions."
Misled
“They are effectively saying these families should have spotted that they were being misled. That they should have spotted a cover up over the circumstances surrounding the crash. That cannot be right.
“The law exists to provide justice, not to reward concealment or to allow public bodies to avoid scrutiny by relying on the passage of time.”
He added: “If the state has failed to act with candour, if information has been withheld and people have been misdirected, it cannot then turn around and say: ‘You are too late.’ That would be a travesty of justice on top of a cover up.”