February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
During a political summit in England last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded that last week’s conviction of loyalist Ken Barrett for the
1989 murder had removed any obstacles to an in-depth judicial investigation of the case.
Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, is believed to have spoken to Geraldine Finucane, the lawyer’s widow, after the Leeds Castle summit broke up Saturday to discuss the scope of the inquiry, which will examine how British forces colluded with the killers.
An announcement was delayed while there was some haggling over the terms. Both Sinn Fein and the SDLP said the British had tried to institute an inquiry that is more limited than recommended by retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory almost a year ago.
Barrett, who’s 41, pleaded guilty to murdering Finucane, a father of three, as he ate Sunday dinner with his family at their home in North Belfast. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison, but is expected to be freed in eight months under a release program for people convicted of Troubles-related crimes that took place before 1998.
Barrett was one of two UDA gunmen who shot Finucane more than a dozen times.
The murder was immediately controversial, because days earlier British government minister Douglas Hogg had told Parliament that some lawyers in the North were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.” It later emerged that Hogg had been briefed by senior RUC officers before making the speech.
Subsequent investigations have shown that a number of British agents were involved in the killing. Brian Nelson, a British army agent, had given the killers a photograph of Finucane. A police agent, William Stobie, supplied the guns.
The plot was organized by another man believed to be a police agent, and Barrett was later recruited as an informant in spite of confessing to the murder to three police officers.
Finucane’s family have long contended that the plot to kill him may have reached the highest echelons of the British government.
Before his conviction, Barrett contended RUC officers played a central role in organizing the murder. Finucane is believed to have been targeted because he had successfully defended paramilitary suspects and he had relatives who were republicans.
“Finucane would have been alive today if the peelers [police] hadn’t interfered,” he told the BBC in a secretly recorded interview. “The peelers wanted him whacked, we whacked him, and that’s the end of the story.”
As he sentenced Barrett, Justice Reg Weir said he had “no doubt that an object of this brutal crime was to intimidate and therefore deter other members of the legal profession from carrying out their duty to represent without fear or favor all those, including terrorists such as you, who come to them for professional advice and assistance.”
Barrett was eventually charged with murder after an elaborate undercover operation by English police, led by the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, John
Stevens.
“He is a serial killer, a cold-blooded killer,” said Johnston Brown, one of the RUC detectives whom Barrett confessed to in 1991. “Ken Barrett is the most sinister person I ever encountered. When you’re in the presence of Ken Barrett, you know you’re in the presence of evil.”
Brown contends that he wanted to pursue Barrett for the Finucane murder but was overuled by the Special Branch, the RUC’s intelligence wing.
In court, he pleaded guilty to the killing, raising immediate suspicions that a deal had been struck with the government or threats had been issued by the UDA to prevent details of the killing being aired over a long trial. Barrett was moved from Northern Ireland to a London prison within days of being sentenced.
Barrett told his legal team that he did not want to express any regret or remorse for his role in the murder.
According to Barrett’s legal team, he has not discussed whether he will cooperate with the Finucane inquiry.