Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) Human Rights Testimony, Northern Ireland

The Association of Legal Justice (ALJ) was a human rights organization formed in 1970 to catalogue the abuses suffered by residents of Northern Ireland during the armed conflict. ALJ disbanded in the early 1990s. The organization primarily focused on charging and sentencing patterns in the Northern Ireland justice system at the time. During their history, ALJ collected over 4,000 statements of abuse from victims or those who witnessed the violations. These statements were collected with a wide range of detail and identified both violent as well as non-violent events during the conflict, particularly in regards to police and state abuse.

NIRI’s collection of statements were compiled from both the personal collection of Clara O’Reilly, one of the founding members of ALJ, as well as the Father Murray Collection in the Tomas O’Fiaich Library at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland.