Steven McCaffery, Press Association
11 January 2011
Press Association National Newswire
No other case from the decades of violence in Northern Ireland has caused the level of controversy sparked by the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane.
The State is implicated in planning the 1989 killing, carrying it out and covering it up ever since.
But over the years, more and more damaging details have leaked out:
:: In the mid 1980s as John Stalker, former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, probed allegations of a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) "shoot-to-kill" policy against republican suspects, he said he was reprimanded by an RUC sergeant for speaking to Mr Finucane outside a court. Mr Stalker was told: "Any man who represents IRA men is worse than an IRA man."
:: In January 1989 Conservative Minister Douglas Hogg told the Commons: "I have to state as a fact, but with great regret, that there are in Northern Ireland a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA." He had been briefed by senior RUC officers prior to making the remarks. The SDLP's Seamus Mallon immediately called on Mr Hogg to withdraw the comments, and said: "I have no doubt that there are lawyers walking the streets or driving on the roads of the north of Ireland who have become targets for assassins' bullets as a result of the statement that has been made tonight." Mr Finucane was shot the following month. Lord Stevens, former Metropolitan Police chief who examined the case, subsequently found that the minister had been "compromised".
:: In the years that followed it would emerge that four security force agents were linked to the Finucane killing. But it would take decades of pressure from the Finucane family, human rights groups, the United Nations, plus media probes, before further movement was secured.
:: In 1992 the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association's (UDA) head of intelligence Brian Nelson stood trial for a catalogue of murders. The former soldier from Belfast's Shankill Road was an army intelligence agent, channelling information to loyalists to help direct their violence. He has also been linked to arms shipments from South Africa to Northern Ireland, with a quantity reaching the hands of loyalist paramilitaries. Nelson was overseen by the army's secret Force Research Unit (FRU). His handlers claimed he helped save innocent lives. And after striking a deal over his conviction, he was never asked to give evidence on his UDA colleagues and served less than six years, before being freed and given a new identity. He died in 2003. As well as providing a photograph of Pat Finucane to the killers, he is said to have driven a gunman to the solicitor's house days before the murder.
:: In 1999 fresh revelations over the Finucane case led to an announcement that the Stevens' team of investigators, who had already carried out two probes into allegations of security force wrongdoing in Northern Ireland, was to return to re-examine the Finucane case. This surprised observers since the government had dismissed earlier UN calls for an investigation by claiming Mr Stevens had already looked at the case during his first two forays into Northern Ireland. But launching his probe, Mr Stevens said: "At no time in Stevens II or the original Stevens I inquiry, did I investigate the murder of Patrick Finucane."
:: In June of the same year the Stevens team charged William Stobie with aiding and abetting in the murder of Mr Finucane. He was a UDA quartermaster and an agent of RUC Special Branch. He said that, before the Finucane murder, he had warned police that gunmen had approached him for weapons and were en route to an attack. In November 2001 the case against Mr Stobie collapsed. He was murdered by loyalists outside his house three weeks later.
:: Claims also emerged that RUC officers had urged so-called UDA "Brigadier" Tommy Lyttle, who was also a Special Branch informant, to use his high-ranking role in the paramilitaries to have Pat Finucane killed.
:: In 2002 the BBC Panorama programme screened footage of UDA member, and police informant, Ken Barrett admitting to killing Mr Finucane. He had confessed to police as early as 1991, but officers at the time claimed their efforts to pursue the matter were blocked by police Special Branch. Barrett claimed he had been encouraged to kill the solicitor by a senior RUC officer. He was handed a life sentence for the murder in 2004, but was freed within three years under the early release scheme for paramilitaries contained in the Good Friday Agreement peace deal of 1998.
:: Wider allegations of security force collusion with paramilitaries became a key political issue. The nationalist SDLP and Sinn Fein pressed the government for action. Embarrassing revelations over the Finucane case from the London-based British-Irish Rights Watch and UN Special rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy were compounded by the loyalist murder in 1999 of Catholic lawyer Rosemary Nelson, a solicitor who had also claimed to have been threatened by police for representing IRA suspects.
:: During political talks on securing power-sharing government between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland, the British and Irish governments agreed to inquiries into six infamous cases where security force collusion with the killers was alleged. Retired Canadian judge Peter Cory was asked to carry out an initial review of the cases. In April 2004 his devastating report on the Finucane murder was released. He found that security forces knew of three plots to kill Mr Finucane but failed to warn him. The army, RUC Special Branch and MI5 were said to have known of UDA plots in 1981, 1985 and seven weeks before he was murdered in 1989. It was said security forces chose not to warn Mr Finucane for fear of jeopardising the life of their undercover agent, Brian Nelson.
:: December 2010 saw an intriguing reference to the Finucane murder in US diplomatic cables from 2005 released by WikiLeaks. It was claimed that MI5 had offered to disclose files relating to the Finucane killing if the probe was conducted under the 2005 Inquiries Act. Amnesty International said it was of concern that files on the solicitor's murder appeared to exist, but had not yet been made public. The cables said the Irish premier at the time, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, said "everyone knows the UK was involved" in the Finucane murder. It was also claimed that US diplomats feared "elements of the security-legal establishments" in Britain, outside MI5, were working hard to prevent an inquiry.
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