Historical Enquiries Team

The Historical Enquiries Team was a unit of the Police Service of Northern Ireland set up in September 2005 to investigate the 3,269 unsolved murders committed during the Troubles (specifically between 1968 and 1998. It was wound up in September 2014, when the PSNI restructured following budget cuts.

The team had three objectives:

Working with families was at the heart of the HET objectives, with a family liaison process in place, and the HET undertaking to provide each affected family with a copy of the relevant report.

It was headed by Commander David Cox, formerly of the London Metropolitan Police, and consisted of a team of 100 investigators and supporting staff, and a budget of £30 million.

HET was split into two distinct teams: Review and Investigation. The Review team was staffed by police officers employed and seconded from outside Northern Ireland, while the Investigation team has been recruited locally.

The team aimed to fulfil its mandate by 2011. However, the investigators - along with the Police Ombudsman - agree that they will require further time to work through the outstanding cases. Cases were generally handles in chronological order.

On 29 January 2008, it was announced that the Team would reopen files on 124 deaths resulting from fatal shootings by British Army soldiers between 1970 and 1973. At that time, under an agreement between the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), military witnesses to deaths were often initially interviewed by the Royal Military Police instead of the RUC. Doubts had since been raised about the independence and effectiveness of these investigations.

In February 2008 it was confirmed in the House of Commons that the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) was to examine all deaths attributed to The Troubles from January 1969 to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, equating to 3,268 deaths which occurred in 2,516 incidents, or 'cases'. At that time 1,039 cases had been allocated to the HET business process, and the team had a total of 175 staff.

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