Pat Finucane - The Campaign Continues

The controversy surrounding the murder of Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane [see Hot Press 22/7] is once again making the headlines. On 12th February, ten years exactly since Finucane's death, British-Irish Rights Watch published, confidentially, a report which alleged that members of the RUC and the Force Research Unit of British military intelligence actively colluded in Finucane's killing. Copies of the report will be presented to the British and Irish governments.

Additionally, over one thousand figures from the legal world have signed a petition in support of the request made last year by the UN's Special Rapporteur that there should be a judicial inquiry into the killing. Signatories include English QCs Michael Mansfield and Louis Blom-Cooper, as well as Michael Farrell of the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, and northern rights lawyers including Rosemary Nelson and Barra McGrory.

Pat Finucane had, up until his death, been an extremely successful solicitor. He had come to public prominence as the legal representative of Bobby Sands during the 1981 H-Block hunger strike. He also represented many of those accused of paramilitary activity in the controversial "supergrass" trials, and had succeeded in winning thousands of pounds in compensation for those who had been mistreated while in the custody of the security forces.

On 12th February 1989, he was at home having dinner with his family when a gunman from the UFF burst in and shot him 14 times. He died instantly. His killers claimed that he was an intelligence officer in the IRA. This was untrue. Finucane had never been a member of that organisation, or Sinn Féin, nor had he ever advocated violence.

The murder was always the subject of much speculation regarding possible collusion between the security forces and loyalists. Suspicions were raised, for example, by the fact that less than four weeks before Finucane's death, Douglas Hogg, a junior minister in the British Home Office, had stated 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." Hogg refused to clarify his comments, or to respond to Seamus Mallon's instantaneous protests.

The case became yet more controversial with the "trial" of Brian Nelson. Nelson was a British agent who had infiltrated the UDA, but was subsequently arrested and charged in 1990 as a result of the Stevens Inquiry into collusion. Many people suspected that a deal was done to buy Nelson's silence just before his case came before the courts. Many of the charges against him were dropped, allegedly in "the interests of justice," and the full story of his activities has never been revealed.

In 1992 the BBC's Panorama broadcast a programme which suggested that Nelson had told British Intelligence that there was an ongoing plot to murder Finucane, in which Nelson was himself involved. The security forces had apparently opted to do nothing to prevent the killing.

Furthermore, in March of last year, The Sunday Telegraph published details from confidential security force documents which they claimed showed that the British government had operated a policy of "assassination by proxy", aiding loyalists to kill people who the security forces wanted eliminated.

Amnesty International have recently added their support to the campaign for an independent inquiry into Finucane's murder.

Pat's widow Geraldine, speaking in The Irish News, pointed out, "All we have done for Pat's murder is just ask questions. A lot of people have come from outside because they felt there were questions to be asked and there were answers that needed to be given. The whole thing is gathering momentum."

Perhaps that momentum is now too great to be resisted, and might deliver some belated truths to the family and friends of Pat Finucane.

— Niall Stanage