Inside the Coagh IRA ambush, one of the most controversial SAS killings in Northern Ireland

The officer who led the SAS operation in which three IRA men were killed in Co Tyrone has revealed intricate details of how the ambush unfolded — as the daughter of the unarmed driver involved presses a fresh legal challenge over his death 35 years ago.

The former SAS major, responsible for planning one of the most controversial lethal clashes of the Troubles, describes how his men had less than two seconds to decide whether to open fire on an IRA unit preparing an assassination.

Three members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade — Michael Ryan, Lawrence McNally and 22-year-old Tony Doris — were killed by British soldiers in the village of Coagh on June 3, 1991.

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Now, more than three decades later, the case is heading towards Britain’s highest court after Doris’s daughter, Roisin Nugent, lodged an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. Her lawyers argue that Doris, who was driving the IRA car but was himself unarmed, should not have been shot.

The former SAS officer who commanded the operation, identified here as David, told The Independent’s podcast SAS: The Shadow War that Special Branch intelligence indicated an IRA active service unit was preparing to murder an off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment as he waited for a lift to work.

David, then a captain, says his orders were not to kill the IRA men but to intercept and arrest them.

“The purpose was to arrest terrorists in the act of committing a serious offence,” he says. “The risk was that people were going to get hurt. Everyone knew that.”

He had about 48 hours to devise a plan that would be sanctioned by the police and military hierarchy and, ultimately, the prime minister.

The plan had mortal danger baked in. The intended IRA victim was secretly removed and replaced by an SAS soldier of similar build and age, dressed to look like him. The decoy would stand in Hanover Square in the town and apparently wait for a lift.

British intelligence, which had deeply penetrated the IRA, believed the original target was going to be shot dead by a paramilitary team as he waited at the pickup spot for his ride to work.

As part of the plan, about a dozen soldiers concealed nearby would rush forward and make arrests. Four more formed a heavily armed “cover group”, hidden inside a flatbed builders’ lorry carrying scaffolding.

A side of the lorry could be dropped in seconds, giving them a clear field of fire across the square if they believed the IRA team was going to open fire.

The substitute target knew exactly what he was volunteering for.

“He put his life on the line, literally,” David says. The operation was first slated to run on Friday May 31. The IRA did not arrive. The operation was reset for a few days later.

Shortly before 7.30am on Monday June 3, a covert observation post reported a red Vauxhall Cavalier travelling towards Coagh with three men inside.

Seconds later the car stopped beside the intended victim, and a man in the back seat rose up with an AK-type assault rifle and aimed it directly towards the decoy.

The covert SAS team got the order: “Go, go, go.”

The decoy threw himself backwards over a wall to avoid getting shot by the IRA. The side of the scaffolding lorry crashed down, and the arrest team began running towards the IRA car.

There has been 35 years of legal argument over what happened next, and why three men were killed.

“Car stops, weapons are shown, weapons are pointed at the soldier, the ‘go’ is given, the foot team start to deploy. The side of the lorry drops,” says David.

The soldiers had to decide whether the gunman was about to kill their colleague standing roughly 20 metres away.

“At that point shots were fired because, in their judgment — and I’m sure they were right — there was an imminent threat to the life of the soldier.”

David says the whole shooting incident took “probably less than two seconds”.

The car lurched forward, travelled across the square and crashed into a parked vehicle. The other two IRA men emerged, armed, and were shot dead.

The 2024 inquest established that the driver Doris was unarmed. It also found that no member of the IRA unit actually fired a weapon during the encounter. Two AK-type rifles were subsequently recovered.

That distinction — between Doris and the armed men alongside him — has become the central battleground in his family’s case.

The shootings were immediately investigated by the local police. But an inquest did not finally deliver its conclusions until April 2024.

Mr Justice Humphreys reached what initially appeared to be contradictory findings in what many supporters of the British special forces believe has fuelled what they call “lawfare” against soldiers.

He ruled that the individual soldiers were justified in opening fire. They genuinely believed lives were in immediate danger.

But he was critical of the way the operation had been designed. On top of that, the coroner found that the Royal Ulster Constabulary investigation into the killings was “woefully inadequate”.

The arrest team had been positioned sufficiently far away that it had little realistic chance of reaching the IRA unit before the cover group had to shoot to protect the decoy, the inquest finding said.

His final verdict was unequivocal on both sides of the argument: the shootings themselves were justified, but the operation “was not planned and controlled in such a way as to minimise to the greatest extent possible the need for recourse to lethal force”.

That finding echoes one of the most persistent allegations made against British Special Forces during the Troubles: that operations presented as arrest missions were in reality designed to kill.

David rejects that allegation and has campaigned against attempts to re-litigate old cases without new evidence.

The Doris family has argued that Soldier B did not need to have fired so many shots at the IRA driver, eight in all. The coroner found that Soldier B could not have known Doris was unarmed and was entitled to regard all three occupants of the vehicle as members of one armed terrorist team posing a collective threat.

The court subsequently refused permission for judicial review of the coroner’s findings in October 2025.

The judge in that case ruled that the application for review was “utterly divorced from reality” of the circumstances faced by the SAS soldier.

The Doris family continued their legal fight - and the case then went to the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal. In April this year, Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan found that: “Mr Doris was part of the threat to life in this fast-moving situation”. The appeal was dismissed.

But the case is not over. Nugent has now lodged her Supreme Court application and the row over lawfare continues.

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