The National President of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America (AOH), Seamus Boyle, today released a letter he sent to President Obama in anticipation of his visit to Ireland later this month.

“England has blocked Ireland’s efforts to secure the truth about the slaughter on May 17th 1974, of innocent people in Dublin and Monaghan towns,” stated Boyle,“ and President Obama could remind the British that  the ultimate success of the Good Friday Agreement is a peace based on truth and justice.” 

Thirty-three lost their lives, in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Ireland’s ‘9/11’ and Her Majesty’s government from day one until today has refused to cooperate with Ireland’s search for the truth.”

Former National President Ned McGinley expressed his hope that President  Obama will take this opportunity to remind Prime Minister Cameron  that Pope John Paul II  in 1979 at Drogheda, pleaded  with politicians “to show that peace achieves the work of justice,”  stated McGinley:  “No Nation claiming sovereignty can write off the  unsolved murder of nearly 1000 of its Catholic religious minority as too expensive or taking too long, unless of course, the answers are known and a cover-up would prove embarrassing to the British Government!”

President Obama knows well how important lawyers were in the U. S. civil rights struggle and so, too, in Ireland’s freedom struggle, stated Joe Roche, former National President:  “In 1986 the Hibernians established an award in the name of the most honored Irishman ever, Nobel Laureate Dr. Sean MacBride, a founder of the International Association of Lawyers, who represented Anwar Sadat, Archbishop Makarios and Jomo Kenyatta and, of course, many Irish men and women.  We have urged President Obama to promote a truly independent inquiry into the deaths of  solicitors Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson  who worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor and persecuted and were  murdered for it.”  Continued Roche:  “What a gift to the Irish people if President Obama, in citing the MacBride legacy, could underscore the importance of justice for peace and send a message to Britain to finally release what they know.”


For more information contact National President Seamus Boyle at: 215-676-4535 or email [email protected]