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Double agent charged in Finucane murder

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Anne Cadwallader

BELFAST — A former UDR man and RUC double agent, William Stobie, charged in court last week with the 1989 murder of Belfast attorney Pat Finucane, revealed seven years ago that he had told his handlers before the killing that the lawyer was being targeted by the loyalist Ulster Defense Association.

The Finucane family, however, was never informed of the danger. Neither were any security precautions taken by the RUC to protect him against the loyalist killers, whom they knew were stalking Finucane.

The claim will increase pressure on the British government to set up a full public inquiry into Finucane’s murder, which, it now appears, was planned by another British army member, Brian Nelson, and Stobie.

Stobie gave an interview as long ago as 1992 in which he said that he had earlier passed a UDA file to RUC Special Branch officers who were "running" him. He claimed that he did this in the belief that this would save Finucane’s life.

He said he had received the file on Finucane from the UDA’s chief intelligence officer, Nelson, at a meeting of the paramilitary group, and had passed it on to his RUC handlers a week later — two months before the shooting in February 1989.

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The information is contained in a report by the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights published in 1993. This widely circulated report evidently never reached the desk of the RUC chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

Flanagan said last week that the first time he heard of allegations of RUC collusion in Finucane’s murder was when he saw the British/Irish Rights Watch file, presented to the British and Irish governments earlier this year.

At the time of the U.S. lawyers’ publication, the RUC press office issued a statement saying the report’s "shortcomings" had led the force to the conclusion that it did not merit "detailed comment." A Northern Ireland Office statement in 1993 said the report "scarcely justified" allegations of collusion in the Finucane murder.

Stobie’s arrest Thursday and its aftermath, however, are now making those conclusions ring hollow.

Stobie, 48, told the RUC when he was charged at Gough Barracks, Armagh, that he had been an RUC Special Branch informer at the time of Finucane’s murder.

Revelations in the wake of the Stobie arrest seem to indicate that there are at least three established links between British military intelligence/RUC Special Branch and the Finucane murder.

€ The UDA chief intelligence officer (Nelson) who scouted Finucane’s house and who, three days before the murder, provided a photograph of him for the murder squad, was a British Army double agent.

€ The UDA quartermaster, Stobie, who provided the weapons used to fatally attack the solicitor — he was shot 14 times — was an RUC double agent.

€ The actual weapon used to murder Finucane was a British Army issue pistol, stolen from a UDR arsenal by another serving UDR man.

The treble

In addition, three weeks before the murder, it is alleged RUC officers suggested to Tommy "Tucker" Lyttle — a leading West Belfast UDA man — that loyalists should concentrate on "the treble."

The treble was a reference to three leading Belfast defense lawyers, Finucane, Pat McGrory (now deceased) and another prominent lawyer who still practices in West Belfast.

Lyttle told the BBC "Panorama" reporter, John Ware, five years ago that this conversation had taken place in Castlereagh Holding Center.

The RUC and British Army have both consistently denied collusion in the murder. The Finucane family is calling for a full, independent, international inquiry.

Finucane was shot dead in the hallway of his North Belfast home in February 1989 as the family sat down to Sunday evening dinner.

His wife, Geraldine, who was in New York last week, was hit in the leg by a ricochet bullet. She said her husband’s last act was to try to prevent the gunmen getting into the dining room to shoot his family.

According to the report compiled on the Finucane murder by the U.S. lawyers, "two independent sources" told them that the RUC had a double agent inside the UDA. Confidential papers which have since come into the possession of this reporter have confirmed this agent was Stobie.

In a separate interview with a Belfast-based journalist, Stobie said he handed over the file to his handlers two months before the shooting. Stobie said that in late December 1988 or January 1989, Brian Nelson came to a UDA meeting and handed over a file on Pat Finucane to Stobie’s commander.

Nelson has already admitted handing over a photograph of Finucane to a UDA man, known as "R," two days before the murder and that he provided details of his address. Like Stobie, Nelson also insists he says he told his military intelligence handlers of the plan to murder the solicitor. He claims to have told them twice.

Stobie claims that when the file was produced at the UDA meeting he assumed Finucane was being targeted. He had passed this file on to his RUC handers a week later.

Critically, he says, that through passing the file on to the RUC handlers, he believed the Finucane murder would be prevented. In the event, Finucane was shot dead only a few weeks later.

The weapons Stobie has admitted he provided for the UDA murder squad were a Browning pistol and an automatic rifle. The pistol was one of 13 stolen from the UDR arsenal at Palace Barracks, Holywood, Co. Down.

Stobie appeared in court in 1990 charged with possession of firearms, and was given bail at an unusually early stage, despite the seriousness of the charges.

On Jan. 23, 1991, at Belfast Crown Court, he was acquitted of the charges after the Crown offered no evidence against him. No explanation was given.

It’s understood, however, that Stobie had threatened to expose his role as an RUC Special Branch agent and his role in providing weapons for the murderers of Pat Finucane.

The U.S. lawyers’ report concludes there is a "staggering array" of stories, incidents and theories pointing to official involvement in the murder of Pat Finucane.

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