Pat Finucane: Murder of lawyer that fuelled distrust and suspicions of collusion
Owen Bowcott
13 December 2010
The Guardian
Pat Finucane, a prominent civil rights and criminal defence lawyer, was eating supper with his wife and three children, when masked, loyalist gunmen smashed their way into his north Belfast home and shot him dead.
Members of the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters broke down the front door with sledgehammers and fired 14 shots from a .38 revolver and a 9mm Browning automatic pistol.
All of the rounds struck Finucane. The UFF claimed they had killed him because he was a high-ranking officer in the IRA. Police at his inquest said there was no evidence to support that assertion.
The attack took place on Sunday, 12 February 1989. More than 20 years later the political consequences of one of the most controversial killings of Northern Ireland's Troubles are still reverberating.
British military intelligence's disputed role in the murder has been the subject of successive police inquiries, several of which remain secret.
Finucane's death fuelled suspicions of collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries while fomenting distrust between Dublin and London. Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Metropolitan police commissioner who conducted three inquiries into allegations of collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, reached an unequivocal judgment in 2003.
"I conclude there was collusion in both murders and the circumstances surrounding them," he wrote of the murder of Finucane and Brian Lambert, a Protestant mistakenly targeted in 1987.Finucane, 38 at the time of his murder, had been at the forefront of arguing that suspects detained under anti-terror legislation were being held in conditions that violated their human rights.
As a solicitor, Finucane had represented loyalists and republicans.
His brother John was an IRA member who had been killed on active service in a car crash in the Falls Road, Belfast, in 1972. Another brother successfully contested attempts to extradite him to Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic; a third brother was the fiance of Mairead Farrell, one of the IRA trio shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988.
The Finucane family has always denied, however, that Pat was involved with the Provisionals.
Three weeks before the shooting, Douglas Hogg, then a junior Home Office minister, told the House of Commons that certain solicitors in Northern Ireland were "unduly sympathetic" to the IRA. Around the same time an RUC officer was reported to have told a client: "You will not be having Mr Finucane as a solicitor much longer."
The man responsible at the time for assembling information about those selected as targets for UFF attacks was Brian Nelson, a former soldier who, it emerged, was an agent for British military intelligence.
Nelson was subsequently convicted of five counts of conspiracy to murder - but not in connection with Finucane's death. Excerpts from his diary, broadcast by BBC Panorama in 1992, suggested he had warned his army handlers in the Force Research Unit (FRU) that Finucane was being targeted.
When Brigadier Gordon Kerr, who was in charge of the FRU, gave evidence at the trial of Nelson, he said the army unit's purpose was to "save life . . . [and] prevent attacks taking place".
He insisted that Nelson's actions had saved numerous lives.
Stevens faced major obstacles when he started investigating allegations of collusion in 1999. At one stage, his offices, inside a secure police compound, mysteriously burnt down. Not all of Stevens's report have been published.
In a 2003 summary of his findings, Stevens was clear. "Collusion is evidenced in many ways. This ranges from the wilful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, through to the extreme of agents being involved in murder.
"The failure to keep records or the existence of contradictory accounts can often be perceived as evidence of concealment or malpractice. It limits the opportunity to rebut serious allegations. The absence of accountability allows the acts or omissions of individuals to go undetected. The withholding of information impedes the prevention of crime and the arrest of suspects. The unlawful involvement of agents in murder implies that the security forces sanction killings.
"My three inquiries have found all these elements of collusion to be present. The co-ordination, dissemination and sharing of intelligence were poor. Informants and agents were allowed to operate without effective control and to participate in terrorist crimes.
"Nationalists were known to be targeted but were not properly warned or protected. Crucial information was withheld from senior investigating officers. Important evidence was neither exploited nor preserved."
William Stobie, a former UDA quartermaster and a police informant, later revealed that he had told his RUC handlers when a UFF commander asked him to get guns for a "job" on a "top Provie".
He said he was amazed officers still did nothing when he alerted them again shortly before the killing. Stobie was later shot dead by, it is thought, loyalist colleagues extracting revenge for his betrayal.
The US diplomatic cables passed to WikiLeaks make clear the Irish government believed the murder left an enduring legacy of distrust between Britain and the broader nationalist community.
James Kenny, the then US ambassador to Dublin, outlined the thinking of the former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern in a cable from July 2004.
The ambassador wrote: "Ahern said it is not a republican, but a nationalist, issue. Because there is such broad-based support across the nationalist community in the North for an inquiry, SF [Sinn Fein] will insist on it."
The Finucane family have been battling for decades for an independent, public inquiry. In 2001, following peace process talks at Weston Park, the government appointed a Canadian judge, Peter Cory, to investigate allegations of collusion.
He recommended a public inquiry into the killing but the Finucane family - and Cory - have been opposed to it being held under the more restrictive terms of the Inquiries Act 2005.
The act empowers ministers to order that some inquiry sessions are held in private and to withhold material from the final published report. In the face of family opposition, hopes of an inquiry stalled.
Amnesty International, the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the Belfast-based Committee for the Administration of Justice have all called for an independent public inquiry.
In 2007, the public prosecution service announced that no members of the security forces would be charged in connection with the Finucane killing. Michael Finucane, his son, described that decision as "extremely disappointing and in some cases very, very perplexing".
Only one man, Ken Barrett, a former Special Branch informer, has been convicted of killing Finucane. Barrett, 44, was jailed for 22 years in 2004 but released shortly afterwards under the terms of the Good Friday agreement. He is believed to be living at a secret location in England.
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