140 Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January – June 2007 the PSNI Chief Constable accepted this recommendation, it was not clear whether the police handlers of those informers would also be investigated. It was not known whether any prosecutions had followed;  the poor standard of record keeping by Special Branch was identified as “a further significant obstacle to the [OPONI’s] investigation”; “a number of important documents were either missing, lost or destroyed. …Some material was destroyed routinely by Special Branch who had no effective systems for document retention”;  the majority of a number of retired senior RUC/PSNI officers whose cooperation the OPONI had sought “failed even to reply”; and  other police officers “including some serving officers, gave evasive, contradictory, and on occasion farcical answers to questions. On occasion, those answers indicated either a significant failure to understand the law, or contempt for the law. On other occasions the investigation demonstrated conclusively that what an officer told OPONI’s investigators was completely untrue”. In light of OPONI’s findings, AI called for charges to be brought promptly against people wherever there was evidence of a recognizably criminal offence. AI reiterated its long-standing concern over collusion between the security forces in Northern Ireland, including the police, and paramilitary groups. AI also noted that perpetrators of human rights abuses had continued to enjoy impunity as a result of the UK authorities’ failure to instigate effective investigations. UK’s compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights In June, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (the Committee of Amnesty International Ministers) adopted its second interim resolution concerning the UK’s compliance with a number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The cases in question were brought by the families of individuals who had allegedly been killed by, or with the collusion of, the UK security forces in Northern Ireland (see case updates below). The ECtHR had unanimously held that the UK had violated Article 2 of the ECHR, enshrining the right to life, by failing to instigate adequate investigations into these killings (see AI Index: EUR 45/010/2001; EUR 45/005/2002; and EUR 45/016/2003). The Committee of Ministers expressed regret that, in all of the cases, “progress has been limited”, and that “in none of the cases [has] an effective investigation […] been completed”. The resolution noted that “the necessity of taking such measures is all the more pressing in these cases, considering the seriousness of the violations found and the time that has elapsed since the European Court’s judgments became final”, and urged the UK to take “without further delay, all necessary investigative steps in these cases in order to achieve concrete and visible progress”. Pearse Jordan (update to AI Index EUR 45/010/2001) Pearse Jordan, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), was shot dead in 1992 by the members of the RUC in disputed circumstances. At the time of his death he was unarmed. A coroner’s inquest into his death opened in 1995. Since then the inquest has been adjourned on several occasions because of legal challenges to aspects of the inquest procedure brought by Pearse Jordan’s family. In March, the Law Lords gave their decision in the most recent of these challenges, which concerned, among other things, the verdicts which the jury in a coroner’s inquest in Northern Ireland is able to deliver. The Law Lords ruled that the AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007