1989 Jonesborough ambush

1989 Jonesborough ambush
Part of The Troubles
Warrant card photographs of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen (left) and Superintendent Bob Buchanan (right)
Location	Edenappa Road, outside Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Coordinates	54°4′25.18″N 6°22′26.38″W / 54.0736611°N 6.3739944°W / 54.0736611; -6.3739944
Date	20 March 1989 15:40 (UTC)
Attack type	Shooting
Weapons	(2) .223 Armalite rifles, (1) Ruger Mini-14, (1) 7.62 Short rifle
Deaths	Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
Perpetrator	1st Battalion Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade

The Jonesborough ambush took place on 20 March 1989 near the Irish border outside the village of Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Two senior Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, were shot dead in an ambush by the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade. Breen and Buchanan were returning from an informal cross-border security conference in Dundalk with senior Garda officers when Buchanan's car, a red Vauxhall Cavalier, was flagged down and fired upon by six IRA gunmen, who the policemen had taken for British soldiers. Buchanan was killed outright whilst Breen, suffering gunshot wounds, was forced to lie on the ground and shot in the back of the head after he had left the car waving a white handkerchief. They were the highest-ranking RUC officers to be killed during the Troubles.^[1][2]

Nobody has been charged with killing the two officers. There have been allegations that the attack was the result of collusion between the Gardaí and the Provisional IRA. As a result, Canadian judge Peter Cory investigated the killings in 2003; his findings were published in a report. This led to the Irish government setting up the Smithwick Tribunal, a judicial inquiry into the killings which opened in Dublin in June 2011 and published its final report in December 2013. In the Judge Peter Smithwick report he was unable to find direct evidence of collusion but said 'on balance of probability', somebody inside the Dundalk Garda station had passed on information to the IRA regarding the presence of Breen and Buchanan.^[3] He added that he was "satisfied there was collusion in the murders".^[4]