Cut Down For Standing Up

Mourners and media shivered together on a chill morning in the Co. Armagh town of Lurgan on 18th March. A squall of rain came and passed. Overcoats were tightened against the blustery wind. A scorch mark on the ground, and some bouquets of flowers laid at the foot of a nearby wall offered sombre reminders of the events of three days previously.

The former marked the spot where a bomb, for which the loyalist splinter group The Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility, had gone off under the car driven by Rosemary Nelson, a prominent human rights lawyer. The wall, only yards away, was still damaged — Nelson's car had careered into it following the blast. She lay there, her legs blown off, horrific abdominal injuries inflicted. She had fought for her life for a further two hours in the nearest hospital but it was a fight she couldn't win. Now we were in Lurgan for her funeral.

Her family and close friends emerged from the house, and made their way slowly down the road. Rosemary's husband Paul and father Tommy, weeping copiously, were among the pall bearers. Immediately behind were her three children Gavin, aged 14, Christopher, 11, and Sarah, eight. Prominent figures including Mary McAleese, the SDLP's Bríd Rodgers, Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly and Danny Morrison and Breandán Mac Cionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition were in attendance. But so too were those patronisingly referred to as "the ordinary people". Middle-aged women drawing heavily on cigarettes, older men looking uncomfortable in worn suits, youths in jeans and trainers . . .

As the cortege wended its way to the church those lining the streets joined its ranks, which swelled to around 5,000. A group of Sarah's schoolfriends lined up on Lake Street. Sarah had heard the explosion which killed her mother while sitting in class. The service itself reached the apex of its poignancy when Gavin Nelson began to speak: "We all know that my mum was a brilliant solicitor and friend. We, as a family, know her as the best wife, mother, sister and parent you could ever wish for. We have all come to celebrate the life of a wonderful person we were very lucky to have known and loved."

Rosemary Nelson began practising law in Lisburn following her graduation from Queen's University, Belfast. She soon moved back to her native Lurgan, where she based herself in a spartan office on William Street. She bore a huge workload, representing clients from both sides of the community in both civil and criminal cases. But, as happened with Pat Finucane, it was her work on high-profile cases representing nationalists which made her a hate figure for the loyalists who murdered her.

She represented Colin Duffy, a leading local Republican who was accused of the murders of two RUC men outside Lurgan police station just prior to the second IRA ceasefire. The charges against Duffy were dropped four months later; she also successfully fought an appeal against his conviction for the murder of a retired UDR soldier, John Lyness. One of the key prosecution witnesses was revealed to be a member of the UVF.

Other clients included the family of Robert Hamill, who was kicked to death by a loyalist mob in the centre of Portadown in May 1997, within yards of an RUC landrover, and the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition. She was working on more than 200 claims from nationalists against their treatment by the RUC over the course of the Drumcree confrontations.

Not surprisingly, her work brought to her threats and intimidation, both from loyalists and, she repeatedly claimed, from the security forces. Brenda Power, writing in The Sunday Tribune, described how: "The last time I saw Rosemary Nelson she opened a neat black leather handbag and took out a folded sheet of note paper . . . scrawled with block capitals in blue biro: WE HAVE YOU IN OUR SIGHTS, REPUBLICAN BASTARD. R.I.P."

Nelson was also one of the relatively few defence lawyers working in Northern Ireland who were prepared to publicly describe their treatment by the security forces. According to her, during the time she represented the Garvaghy Residents in 1997, she was physically and verbally abused by RUC officers. She said she was drawn into a circle of police, none of whom were wearing identification numbers, who called her a "fenian fucker" amongst other things. "I have never been so frightened in my entire life," she recalled. In November last year, in a report drawn up by British-Irish Rights Watch she said of her experiences with the RUC: "They say I'm a terrorist . . . and that makes them a terrorist, too. Sometimes they say I'm a tout. They also ask if I'm a good ride and say it's well known that my clients are sleeping with me."

Given these allegations, the suspicion of security force collusion in the murder of Rosemary Nelson is widespread, particularly in Nelson's native area — Lurgan is in the middle of what is known as Mid-Ulster's "murder triangle". Billy Wright was a much-feared figure here; it is also the area where the allegations of co-operation between respectable unionist politicians, RUC and loyalist killers, which formed the basis of Sean McPhilemy's controversial book The Committee, carry most weight.

Immediately following her death local people pointed out that there was an unusually high level of security force activity near her home on the night before her killing. It is also clear that the car bomb used to murder her requires a level of sophistication which the Red Hand Defenders had never previously demonstrated. It is a potent reminder of the dangers encountered by defence lawyers in the north that just one month before her death, Rosemary Nelson was one of 1,100 international legal figures who had signed a petition demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane.

The parallels between the Nelson and Finucane cases are striking. Finucane had represented Bobby Sands during the Hunger Strike, and had also helped clients win thousands of pounds in compensation for ill-treatment inflicted by the security forces. One month before his death, the British Home Office minister, Douglas Hogg, made the now infamous claim in the House of Commons that "there are in Northern Ireland a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA." Four weeks later, while Pat Finucane was having Sunday dinner with his family, a loyalist gunman burst into his home and shot him 14 times. He died instantly.

As is the case with Rosemary Nelson, Pat Finucane and his clients claimed they were regularly threatened by the RUC. One of the people who Finucane defended claims that during his period in detention he was told by a police officer that "fucking Finucane's getting taken out." Further light was shed on the Finucane case by the arrest of Brian Nelson, a British informer within the UDA, as a result of the Stevens inquiry into collusion. Nelson's trial was bizarre. The most serious of the charges against him were dropped (including two counts of murder) and Nelson pleaded guilty to the remaining charges, thus obviating the possibility of revelations emerging if he came under cross-examination.

Nelson's testimony to the Stevens Inquiry has never been made public. According to the BBC's Panorama programme, though, he informed his British intelligence handlers that the UDA were planning to murder Finucane. As with Rosemary Nelson, Finucane's family claim that there was a high security presence near his north Belfast home on the day of the murder.

Last month, British-Irish Rights Watch presented a confidential report to both the British and Irish governments. Only a summary of the report was publicly released — it claimed to have uncovered new information which, if genuine, proves that members of the RUC suggested that the UDA kill Finucane, and that RUC Special Branch had detailed information about the murder plot but did nothing to prevent it or to protect the lawyer.

The murder of Rosemary Nelson had particular resonance for Pat Finucane's legal partner, Peter Madden. "Before Pat's death there were a number of statements made by solicitors detailing the threats made against them. In Pat's case, those threats intensified for about a year before his death. Then, even after his death, that continued in terms of gloating remarks," he says.

"As far as Rosemary was concerned, [more recently] she seemed to get the brunt of these threats. She was isolated in Lurgan. Any of the threats she got she made them public, because if anything happened, she didn't want people saying they had been made up."

Would Madden think that what happened to Rosemary will intimidate other solicitors and prevent them from continuing in their work?

"I'm not sure," he begins. "Now that they've killed Rosemary, I think it actually strengthens people's resolve. I am totally disgusted by the fact that they targeted a woman, a mother of three."

The human tragedy of Rosemary Nelson's murder is inescapable. The faces of her children, shocked and barely able to comprehend the events which had engulfed them, pay more eloquent testimony to her than words ever could. In the aftermath of the killing, graffiti appeared on walls around Lurgan and Portadown: Rosemary Nelson Voice of the People Murdered by the RUC/RIR. Nelson spoke out for people who had few others to speak for them. She fought for those trapped in a system that did not care about them. She happened to believe that those things were worth fighting for, worth putting her own life in danger for. As she stated in an interview, "You're dignifying it by describing it as sectarianism — it's racism. I'm a lawyer trying to defend people's rights when they have no rights to defend."

Someone, somewhere, placed a bomb under Rosemary Nelson's car and blew her to pieces because she believed in human rights. Three children have no mother. A husband has lost his wife. And the people she fought for have, for the moment at least, no one left to fight for them.