February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Finucane, a Catholic who frequently represented republicans, was shot dead by the UDA in front of his family at his North Belfast home in 1989. It’s been established that the gun used to kill him was supplied by a police informer and that a British Army informer helped the assassins.
The London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, announced last Wednesday that the report should be finalized before next spring. There is speculation, however, that his report may be delayed longer should a public inquiry be ordered. Sinn Fein and the SDLP have regretted the delay, with both parties calling for a full public inquiry.
“This is the second time that the Stevens Report into the killing of Pat Finucane has been delayed,” Sinn Fein’s spokesperson on policing, Gerry Kelly, said: “There are facts which are well known. Tommy Lyttle [a UDA man, since deceased] who ordered the killing was an RUC Special Branch agent. The self-confessed gunman, Ken Barrett [now understood to be on a witness protection program] was an RUC Special Branch agent.
“The man who supplied the weapons, Billy Stobie [a UDA man since murdered by loyalists] was an RUC Special Branch agent, and the man who set it all up, Brian Nelson, was a British Army agent”.
It has been reported that Stevens is to blame two Special Branch officers for deliberately failing to stop the murder, but the Finucane family wants claims of far wider collusion, both police and military, to be investigated. The report is also expected to criticize Brigadier Gordon Kerr, now Britain’s military attach