Kingsmill Massacre - The Perpetrators

The Perpetrators

The next day, a caller claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the South Armagh Republican Action Force. He said that it was retaliation for the Reavey and O’Dowd killings of the night before, and that there would be "no further action on our part" if loyalists stopped their attacks. He added that the group had no connection with the IRA.

The IRA at the time denied responsibility for the killings. It stated on 17 January 1976:

The Irish Republican Army has never initiated sectarian killings... if loyalist elements responsible for over 300 sectarian assassinations in the past four years stop such killing now, then the question of retaliation from whatever source does not arise.

However, a 2011 report by the Historical Inquiries Team (HET) found that the Provisional IRA was responsible for the killings. The HET dismissed the claim at the time that the killings were the work of the South Armagh Republican Action Force. It said such was the widespread revulsion that the IRA attempted to distance itself from the attack by using this cover-name. It added: "There is some intelligence that the Provisional IRA unit responsible was not well-disposed towards central co-ordination but there is no excuse in that. These dreadful murders were carried out by the Provisional IRA and none other".

Responding to the report, Sinn Féin spokesman Mitchel McLaughlin said that he did "not dispute the sectarian nature of the killings" but continued to believe "the denials by the IRA that they were involved". SDLP Assemblyman Dominic Bradley called on Sinn Féin to "publicly accept that the HET’s forensic evidence on the firearms used puts Provisional responsibility beyond question" and cease "deny that the Provisional IRA was in the business of organising sectarian killings on a large scale".

According to the account of journalist Toby Harnden, the British military intelligence assessment at the time was that the attack was carried out by local IRA members "who were acting outside of the normal IRA command structure". He also quoted an alleged South Armagh IRA member, Volunteer M, who said that "IRA members were ordered by their leaders to carry out the Kingsmill massacre". Furthermore, Harnden reported a contradictory RUC allegation that the attack was planned, and that future Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt was among the IRA members who planned it (at the nearby Road House pub on New Year's Eve) and took part.

It was alleged by Harnden that IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey, on the suggestion of Brian Keenan, ordered that there had to be a disproportionate retaliation against Protestants in order to stop Catholics being killed by loyalists. According to IRA informer Sean O'Callaghan, "Keenan believed that the only way to put the nonsense out of the Prods, was to hit back much harder and more savagely than them". However, O'Callaghan reports that Twomey and Keenan did not consult the IRA Army Council before sanctioning the Kingsmill attack. This version of events is disputed by republican leader Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who claims that he and Twomey only learned of the Kingsmill attack after it had taken place.

Two AR-18 rifles used in the shooting were found by the British Army in 1990 in a wall near Cullyhanna and forensically tested. It was reported that the rifles were linked to 17 killings in the South Armagh area from 1974 to 1990. Further ballistic studies found that guns used in the attack were linked to 37 murders, 22 attempted murders, 19 non-fatal shootings and 11 finds of spent cartridges between 1974 and 1989.

In 2012, a secret Royal Military Police (RMP) document shown to the Sunday World newspaper revealed that the gunman who finished-off the dying men could have been arrested five months later. The document says that the man (referred to as 'P') was wounded when British soldiers engaged an IRA unit near the Mountain House Inn on the Newry–Newtownhamilton Road on 25 June 1976. He managed to flee over the border and was treated at Louth County Hospital shortly after. The three other members of the IRA unit were captured within hours. According to the RMP document, two of them broke the IRA code of secrecy and named 'P' as the fourth member. Four guns were also captured by security forces after the gunfight, including two that had been used in the Kingsmill massacre. The RMP document reveals that both the British Army and RUC knew that 'P' was being treated at the hospital but "made no attempt to have him arrested and extradited". This has led to suspicions that 'P' – "who has never been prosecuted despite extensive paramilitary involvement" – was a British agent.