February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The family raised with Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern the Inquiries Act 2005, which they believe would be used to cover up the truth, rather than expose it.
Finucane’s widow, Geraldine, was accompanied by the dead man’s former legal partner, Peter Madden, who is also her solicitor, and Jane Winter, director of the London-based human rights organization British Irish Rights Watch.
Madden met the most senior legal officer in Britain, the lord chancellor, In London last month. He confirmed that no judge has yet been appointed to the proposed inquiry.
Madden informed the lord chancellor that the Finucane family would not take part in any inquiry under the new legislation because it would not comply with the recommendations of former Canadian judge Peter Cory.
The British government had asked Cory to rule on whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant a public inquiry. He had replied that there was and that such an inquiry must be independent, international and public.
The Irish government is on record supporting Cory’s ruling and his view that the new Inquiries Act would not be sufficiently independent to get to the truth about allegations of state collusion with loyalists in the murder.
Cory had said the act would create an “Alice in Wonderland” situation. He added that he, personally, could not recommend any judge should preside over such an inquiry.
This view was supported by the British judge, Lord Saville, currently presiding over the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, who had added that this was also the view of the Australian and Canadian judges sitting on the same inquiry.
The Inquiries Act 2005 removes control over what evidence should be held in public, and other key powers, from any panel of judges, handing authority over instead to the British government.
Since that government, in the Finucane case, is in effect accused of murder itself, there would be no degree of independence — one of Cory’s crucial requirements.