Law Day -- Operation Flavius: Who Guards the Guards, Who Watches the Watchers?

Law Day -- Operation Flavius: Who Guards the Guards, Who Watches the Watchers? On the 6th of March 1988, British Special Air Services and local authorities in Gibraltar conducted a secret operation to arrest three suspected Irish Republican Army members who were suspected of planning a bombing at a British military installation on "the Rock." By the end of the day, all three were dead and questions about whether the operation was merely botched or amounted to state sanctioned murder were being raised and just as quickly suppressed. Prof. Woodward will also review the subsequent legal proceedings brought by the families of the deceased IRA members in the United Kingdom and before the European Court of Human Rights. The story and the legal case are a cautionary tale for current times when questions about the Rule of Law and the use of military power to enforce civil law abound.