Description
The right to trial by jury was suspended for certain "scheduled offences" and the court consisted of a single judge. The courts were abolished in 2007. However, the trial of Brian Shrivers and Colin Duffy for the murder of two British soldiers during a Real IRA gun attack on Massereene army base in Northern Ireland in 2009 was heard in a Diplock court in January 2012.
The courts were established in response to a report submitted to parliament in December 1972 by Lord Diplock, which addressed the problem of dealing with Irish republicanism through means other than internment. Lord Gardiner's Minority Report as part of the Parker Report in March 1972 found "no evidence of this or of perversity in juries". The report marked the beginning of the policy of "criminalisation", whereby the State removed legal distinctions between political violence and normal crime, with political prisoners treated as common criminals. The report provided the basis for the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973, which, although later amended (with the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 and subsequent renewals), continued as the basis for counter-terrorist legislation in the UK. Until recently the Diplock courts only tried Republican or Loyalist paramilitaries. In the first case in which a person not associated with the Troubles was tried and convicted, Abbas Boutrab, a suspected al-Qaeda sympathiser, was found guilty of having information that could assist bombing an airliner. A sentence of six years was handed down on December 20, 2005.
Diplock courts are common in Northern Ireland for crimes connected to terrorism. The number of cases heard in Diplock courts reached a peak of 329 yearly in the mid-1980s. With the Northern Ireland peace process that figure fell to 60 a year in the mid-2000s. On 1 August 2005, the Northern Ireland Office announced that the Diplock courts were to be phased out, and in August 2006 they announced that the courts were to be abolished effective July 2007. This was achieved under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007.
Non-jury trials, however, may still be used in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere in the UK, but only in exceptional cases.
Read more about this topic: Diplock Courts
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