February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Speaker of New York City Council Christine Quinn told a breakfast fundraiser in Manhattan today (Thursday) for the planned Pat Finucane Life and Legacy that peace must be underpinned by the truth about collusion between state forces and loyalist paramilitaries.
The breakfast, hosted by the Irish Echo newspaper, aided the Pat Finucane Life and Legacy conference being organised by Pat’s widow Geraldine and the Finucane family in Trinity College Dublin next February, the 20th anniversary of his murder.
Speaker Quinn, who met with the Finucane family in Belfast last year, backed calls for a full independent inquiry into the murder of the top human rights lawyer.
“I have been impressed by the family’s conviction that this isn’t just about the murder of Pat Finucane but that it is relevant not only to the hundreds who lost their lives due to collusion but also to the fact you can’t build peace in Northern Ireland without peace and justice. There have been admissions and apologies from the IRA about their past activities now we similarly need the British to tell the truth about the murder of Pat Finucane so that we can move forward.”
New York attorney Brigadier General James Cullen – a founder of the Brehon Law Society – told the gathering that the Finucane family was right to refuse to have anything to do with the restricted inquiries being held into other controversial killings where state collusion is alleged. “Irish America will stand by Geraldine Finucane in her demand that the British honor their commitment at Weston Park in 2001 to hold a full, independent inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane which was commissioned by British Military Intelligence and Special Branch agents.”
Consul General of Ireland, Ambassador Niall Burgess, said the Irish Government remained committed to having the full truth about the Finucane killing exposed. Irish Echo publisher M_irt