February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Anne Cadwallader
BELFAST — A full public inquiry into allegations of state collusion in the murder of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane has come a step closer with revelations that the RUC may have obstructed an inquiry into the shooting.
The dead man’s widow, Geraldine Finucane, has made a fresh call for an independent inquiry into her husband’s death following claims by a retired RUC detective that the force’s Special Branch blocked efforts to jail her husband’s killers.
The claims were made in a TV program in which Johnston Brown told of how he had heard Finucane’s loyalist killer "boasting and gloating" about the murder. The killer’s identity had been known to the RUC since 1991, he said. In addition, the program revealed that a taped confession by the man, who was an RUC informer, has since disappeared. The program claimed a decision was made at a senior level of the Special Branch to obstruct the murder inquiry.
Finucane was shot dead by the UDA in front of his family in their North Belfast home in 1989.
There have been claims of collusion between the British military and the murder is subject of an ongoing investigation by a team headed by Sir John Stevens, commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.
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Det. Sgt. Brown said that in 1991 he taped a loyalist outlining his involvement in the murder of Finucane. He was in a car along with a member of Special Branch at the time. He checked out details given in the confession and they matched forensic reports about the murder.
"Someone, within a week of that confession being in our domain, had made the decision not only not to go forward with the investigation, but to obstruct and to ensure that anyone like myself coming forward would be ridiculed," Brown said.
Brown said he had been threatened at the time because of his objections. He claimed he was told he would end up in jail, or a gun would be planted on his son.
The program also quoted an unnamed RUC source who said Special Branch kept files on other RUC officers, and those who questioned its activities were warned of "dire consequences." One retired chief superintendent said: "I fear Special Branch more than the Provisional IRA or the Real IRA".
Geraldine Finucane said it was now "extremely obvious" that the only way to get at the truth was through an independent inquiry. The Finucane family has the backing of the Irish government and has also gone to Downing Street and Europe in its long-running campaign for an independent inquiry into the murder.
The Northern Ireland Police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, has sent for a transcript of Brown’s interview in order to decide whether she should launch her own formal investigation.
No one has been charged with the murder, but the Stevens team haa charged a former UDA quartermaster, William Stobie, who was also acting as an RUC agent at the time, with aiding and abetting in the murder and possessing the guns used in the killing.
It is believed the charges made against Stobie almost two years ago could be dropped if a government information officer and former Sunday newspaper journalist goes ahead with a threat to withdraw, on heath grounds, the statement that led to Stobie being charged.
Euro court cites British
Tears of relief flowed from the relatives of 12 people, 13 of them shot dead by either the RUC or British Army, as the European Court of Human Rights announced Friday that their loved-ones’ right to life had been violated by the British government.
The 14 victims included 10 IRA men shot dead by British troops and the RUC, one shot dead as he passed close to an SAS ambush, and one Sinn Fein activist shot dead by loyalists, allegedly with police collusion.
Although the British government has pointed out that the ruling referred specifically to its failure to inquire properly into the killings (and not on the substantive causes of the killings), relatives say that if proper inquiries had been carried out, they would have concluded there was a shoot-to-kill policy.
In four separate cases considered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, the British government was found to have violated Article 2 of the Human Rights Convention, stipulating a proper investigation into the causes of death.
Relatives of the victims have all been awarded £10,000 compensation and costs, a highly unusual development and one signaling how serious the ECHR considered the breach of human rights.
In the judgment, the court ruled that eight IRA men shot dead by soldiers of an undercover SAS unit at Loughgall, Co. Armagh, in 1987, and two IRA men killed by RUC officers, had their human rights violated.