DETAILS OF FINUCANE CASE LEAKED OVER YEARS

DETAILS OF FINUCANE CASE LEAKED OVER YEARS
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.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2011, British Special Forces, Collusion, Douglas Hogg, Finucane, Hogg, MI5, Real IRA, Rosemary Nelson, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Special Branch

Murder of lawyer that fuelled distrust and suspicions of collusion

The US embassy cables Ireland:
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.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, British Special Forces, Collusion, Douglas Hogg, Finucane, Hogg, IRA, Sinn Féin, Special Branch

The family can't move on until the truth is told

The family can't move on until the truth is told
23 July 2010
Belfast Telegraph

The lucid memory of that horrific episode, however, lives with him every day, emboldening a relentless, painstaking search for the truth about who was really behind it.

John Finucane, now an established Belfast solicitor himself, is certain that the security forces colluded with loyalists for an assassination he believes was condoned -- even sanctioned -- by the Government.

An outrageous suggestion some might think, but an hour in the company of this 30-year-old criminal lawyer and human rights activist may well cloud the most cynical minds in doubt.

"Through the very nature of his work in those days, my father was proving to be a thorn in the establishment's side," John says.

"He was taking on the British establishment -- with their own laws, through their own courts. He was good at it too, and I don't think they liked that. Quite simply, they killed him because he was effective at his job."

He adds: "My father was looking into unlawful detentions and killings by the security forces. He was one of a select few prepared to do the work."

That work was ended, abruptly and mercilessly, when Pat Finucane, then 39, was shot 14 times by loyalist paramilitary Ken Barrett and another man. Barrett, a UDA informer, finally pleaded guilty to the murder in 2004.

Pat Finucane had been representing well known IRA man Pat 'Beag' McGeown, a suspect in the notorious, brutal and all-too-public murders of two Army corporals in Andersonstown in March 1988. Pictures of Mr Finucane outside Belfast's Crumlin Road Courthouse with his client appeared in the Press. The UDA/UFF said they killed him because he was an "IRA officer" -- although no evidence has ever emerged to support this claim.

Pat Finucane did, however, have well established republican roots. Three brothers -- John, Dermot and Seamus -- were in the Provisional IRA. John was killed 'on active service' in 1972, Dermot was one of the 38 Maze escapees in 1983 and Seamus was a Provo colleague of Bobby Sands (later a client of Pat's); the pair were arrested attempting to destroy a Belfast property store in 1976.

Pat Finucane's son does not believe his father was merely paying for the sins of his siblings; his representation of high-profile paramilitaries is a more plausible 'justification.'

"My father represented loyalists and republicans," he says. "As a solicitor you can't refuse a case and he didn't. He got work because he was successful in challenging the police and the Government. I believe he became a hate figure for them."

John was only eight when his father was murdered in front of him, his mother Geraldine, his brother Michael (then 17) and sister Katherine (13) .

"It was around 7pm," he remembers. "There was a loud bang at the front door and before anybody had time to react my father was killed in front of us in the kitchen.

"We were literally in the middle of our dinner. They suspected the people who did this had done it before because every shot that was fired hit my father. It was particularly brutal in nature."

In 1999, the Metropolitan Police Chief Sir John Stevens, who had already been investigating collusion allegations in Northern Ireland for a decade, launched a specific inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder.

Arising from that investigation, RUC Special Branch agent and loyalist quartermaster William Stobie was charged with supplying one of the pistols used in the murder. He admitted the offence, but denied knowing who the target was. He also argued he'd warned his handlers a shooting was imminent.

The Stobie case collapsed in November 2001; he was shot dead by loyalists outside his own home shortly afterwards.

But John's focus is not on the paramilitaries involved.

"They were merely sent out to do a job," he says. "The main question is: who sent them out, and why? Loyalists have since gone on the record to say that they were told by the RUC to target my father.

"Why did the Government feel they could get a solicitor murdered in their own jurisdiction?

"Why did they have a policy where many other people were killed?

"If this was just about the murder of my father I don't think it would have gathered as much momentum or attracted as much attention as it has. This was a policy that affected many, many people."

He adds: "We know it was Brian Nelson (the loyalist and Army double agent) who provided the intelligence and who had helped set the murder up."

Army officers interviewed by the Stevens team denied any knowledge of a high-level plot but that isn't the source of frustration for the victim's family.

"Prosecutions aren't an issue for us," John admits. "We aren't interested in anybody going to jail for this. The main focus for us is getting at the truth.

"And, firstly, that truth must be told in its entirety. Secondly, that truth must be acknowledged and accepted by the British Government. Thirdly, we must learn lessons from this.

"Until we know what really went on, we'll never be able to learn from it. We must send out a message that we will not tolerate that sort of behaviour from our Government, or from its various agencies."

John's father was killed just weeks after Home Office minister Douglas Hogg told the Commons a number of Ulster solicitors were "unduly sympathetic" to the IRA.

"Yes, and he has never admitted why he made that statement," says John. "We have since learned that he was briefed by senior members of the RUC and given that information to say. One of Stevens' reports says Hogg was compromised.

"The Stevens Report itself has never been published -- why's that?"

You get the impression John Finucane knows the answers already. All he wants is for the Government to own up to its perceived involvement. It could be a long wait; it has already been.

"For the last 20 years, the British Government have resisted, have fought every step of the way to cover up the truth," he says. "As a family, it makes us very suspicious as to what they're hiding."

The Finucane family (John's brother, Michael, is also a solicitor) have been promised an inquiry into Pat's murder -- and they will settle for nothing less.

Put simply, they want the powers-that-be to finally say: 'Yes, that's what happened . . . and we're so sorry it did'.

"My family aren't asking for an open-ended, costly inquiry," John says. "I think this could be dealt with very swiftly. But we need to deal with the past; we can't walk away from it. "

The Finucanes' quest for adequate closure has been backed by, among others, various US Presidents, the Irish Government and the European Parliament.

"My mother (now 60) has likened it to a sore or a cut -- if you don't treat it properly and just cover it up, it will fester below the surface and eventually come up, even more rotten than it was originally," says John.

"And something very rotten was going on at that time, something that caused not just my father's death, but many others."

Today, sitting in a busy cafe in Belfast city centre -- a Belfast thronged with young people who have never heard this story and, frankly, would have no interest in hearing it either -- John admits to occasionally wondering why he has persisted in his quest for the truth for so long.

"I was eight when this happened; I'm 30 now. For the vast majority of my life I haven't known anything else," he says.

Time, however, doesn't make dealing with such a "violent, traumatic and unforeseen death" any easier for a family man looking forward to the birth of his third child next week.

One of his boys is nearly the age John was on that fateful night back in 1989.

"My father was taken away from me. I feel I've missed out on an awful lot and I miss him as much now as I ever did," he says.

"You miss having your father. And the more I find out about who he was, the more I've missed not having that person in my life. That pain, that grief will always be there."

He adds: "No-one wants to spend their life having to talk about the murder of their father and why they want justice to be achieved, but it's where we are. We do want to put this behind us, but until the truth is told I really don't think that's possible."

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, British Special Forces, Collusion, Douglas Hogg, Finucane, Hogg, MI5, protective custody, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Special Branch

Testimony by John Finucane

House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Hearing - Concerns Regarding Possible Collusion in Northern Ireland: Police and Paramilitary Groups
22 October 2009
Congressional Documents and Publications
Testimony by John Finucane, Belfast, Northern Ireland - October 22, 2009

Continue Reading... Labels: British Special Forces, Collusion, Douglas Hogg, Finucane, Hogg, IRA, Ireland, MI5, Northern Ireland, Real IRA, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Special Branch

Hamilton McMillan MI6 (1999)

Hamilton McMillan was named by Howard Marks (drug trafficker) as the intelligence officer who recruited him into MI6.

The reason MI6 wanted Howard Marks was due to his known association with James Joseph McCann, the IRA man who was part of Mark's drug smuggling operations into Ireland.

Continue Reading... Labels: British Special Forces, Dennis Howard Marks, Douglas Hogg, Drugs, Hamilton McMillan, Hogg, Howard Marks, IRA, Ireland, James Joseph McCann, Jim McCann, McCann, MI5, MI6, Real IRA, Special Branch

Sleaford MP denies he claimed expenses for moat cleaning

12 May 2009
Sleaford MP denies he claimed expenses for moat cleaning
Sleaford Standard

MP Douglas Hogg has denied newspaper reports that he claimed more than £2,000 in expenses to have the moat at his Lincolnshire home cleaned.
The Daily Telegraph revealed on Monday and Tuesday that Mr Hogg used parliamentary allowances to help meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper for his Kettlethorpe Hall home, near Saxilby, just north of Lincoln.

Other claims included the cost of running the housekeeper's car, a gardener, bills for a mole catcher and a call-out to have bees removed. Parts of the house and estate go back to the 13th century and, according to expenses documents leaked by the Telegraph, Mr Hogg had claimed 2,000 for having his moat cleaned out as well as repairs to 'stable lights' and piano tuning.

But the Sleaford and North Hykeham MP told the Standard: "I have never claimed for the moat, or for the piano tuning - the allegation that I did is incorrect. I never claimed for these and I never received any money.

"The work to the stables that the Telegraph mentioned was actually for maintenance of security lights which were installed by the Home Office as part of the response to an IRA threat."

He said he had issued, in the interests of full transparency, full lists of all his expenditure on the property but these were never meant to be the record of a claim.

Mr Hogg said it was clear to the fees office that the overall allowable expenses were over the Additional Costs Allowance and that his claim only covered utilities, council tax, building insurance, the alarm system, heating, repairs and maintenance of house and garden and 65 per cent of the cost of a housekeeper to clean and maintain the house and look after it when he and his wife, Baroness Sarah Hogg, were away.

He said: "It was on this basis and with the express agreement of the fees office, in advance and in writing that I was making a monthly claim equal to one-twelfth of the ACA."

Mr Hogg added: "I am amongst the lowest claimers in parliament – specifically 551st out of 645 MPs in 2007/8.

"There is no doubt that our system has lost public confidence and we as parliamentarians have got to accept that we are responsible for having put the system in place and that it is probably flawed.

"We got it wrong and need to apologise for that, and I do apologise for it."

Continue Reading... Labels: 2009, Collusion, Finucane, Hogg, IRA, Rosemary Nelson