PSNI face criticism as campaign to track down wanted men in Northern Ireland bears fruit​​​​​​​

In all, 49 pictures of convicted and suspected offenders have been posted up on the PSNI's social media profiles in recent months, along with messages asking for help finding them.

The News Letter can now reveal that the vast bulk of wanted men have been found.

But some had been missing for months before the PSNI issued appeals to find them.

In one case, the force waited 15 months before alerting the public to a suspect's disappearance.

The name of the campaign to trace the men? Operation Relentless.

This is in sharp contrast to the missing person appeals which the PSNI make on a constant basis; after someone has been reported missing their name, photo, and often other details will be spread on social media by police within days if not hours (and frequently the person is found within a fairly short time).

- WHAT, WHO, WHEN -

Op Relentless has been run in previous years, but its latest version was unveiled by police this July.

It only really ramped up in late August and early September when pictures of the missing suspects began appearing on PSNI Facebook pages on a large scale.

One suspect on the Op Relentless list had failed to appear in court back in June 2021 when he was meant to face charges of criminal damage and cultivating a class B drug.

As far as the News Letter can tell, the first time the PSNI mentioned he was missing was in September this year when his picture went up on the Mid Ulster PSNI Facebook page.

Almost no other information which could help track him down was provided though, such as his known haunts, distinguishing features like tattoos, or what age he is.

Another wanted target under Op Relentless was an eastern European man who had failed to appear in court in October 2021 on an ABH charge.

The PSNI only put his picture online in August 2022.

And another man on the wanted list was Montassar Ghadghadi, who had disappeared five months earlier, in April 2022.

Again, the News Letter can find no public mention of him having gone missing prior to his Op Relentless posting on September 20 this year.

In Ghadghadi’s case – as with many of the other wanted suspects – the PSNI did not mention what his offence was.

In fact, Ghadghadi was an arsonist who was convicted in 2016 of burning down a woman's house three years earlier in Tandragee.

A friend of his girlfriend lived there, and while no-one was inside at the time of the fire, a neighbouring home containing a grandmother and two small children was damaged in the process. A Tunisian national, on being convicted he told the court: "That’s what we call racist."

The News Letter can reveal that, as of October 10, all but 14 of the 49 Op Relentless appeals for wanted men now have been taken down.

This is due to "either the individuals being located or after we received information which meant we could remove them", say police.

- ‘GOOD JOB – BUT WHY WAIT SO LONG?’ -

Gavin Robinson – DUP MP for East Belfast, barrister by training, and the party spokesman for home affairs – told the News Letter: "The PSNI deserve merit for seeking the public's help.

"[But] there should be questions around how they encapsulate this operation as 'Operation Relentless' given that there seems to have been inaction ... in many of the cases.

"When the police seek public help, the public respond. The public want to see justice. So perhaps the police should be doing this on a more regular basis.

"[The public] don't want society filled with people who think they're immune from prosecution. The public will always stand ready to help. But the police need to ask."

Questioned about this, and about why it provided only patchy information on the men they are trying to trace, PSNI Chief Superintendent Muir Clark said in a statement: “Operation Relentless is a social media-focused campaign by police to locate outstanding individuals who are wanted on bench warrants or wanted for arrest or interview.

"Images of offenders are uploaded on local police Facebook pages after every reasonable opportunity has been pursued by officers to locate the individuals.

"Regardless of why they are wanted or where they were last seen, we are simply asking our followers on Facebook if they recognise the person whose image has been posted and if they can help us to locate them.

"The service we provide is victim focused and Operation Relentless is another tool to help us achieve effective and timely resolutions for victims of crime.

"We hope that the wider community in Northern Ireland will continue to support us during Operation Relentless so that we can assist speedy justice for victims."

The PSNI was asked how is it achieving "timely resolutions" by allowing several months - and sometimes well over a year - to elapse before publishing vague details of wanted individuals.

"We have nothing further to add," said police.

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