Saturday-Monday, 3-5 April, 2004
Tuesday-Wednesday, 6-7 April, 2004
Saturday-Monday, 3-5 April, 2004
Pressure grows for inquiry
By Republican News
The British government is being strongly pressured by human rights groups, Irish nationalists, the Irish and US governments, a former senior United Nations representative and its own appointed investigator to give the go-ahead to a public inquiry into the 1989 killing of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane.
Following the publication of the reports by Canadian judge Peter Cory calling for four public inquiries, the British government last week announced that three inquiries would be established into the murders of Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and Billy Wright.
But British Direct Ruler Paul Murphy said an inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder was pending the outcome of criminal proceedings against a unionist paramilitary, Ken Barrett, who was currently in custody.
The British government had committed to acting on the Cory commendations, and has been strongly criticised for reneging on this commitment.
Judge Peter Cory told Irish radio today a public inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder should be held without delay and could be facilitated in conjunction with ongoing court proceedings.
Speaking this morning, Judge Cory said that the Irish and British governments had agreed that if an independent judge recommended the holding of a public inquiry then there would be such an inquiry.
"I am disappointed," he said. "It's unfortunate that the decision has been made that the public inquiry must be delayed.
"For the family, the murder was so long ago I just thought there should be some final resolution with regard to it as soon as possible.
"This is one of those rare instances where it's more important to have the public inquiry for the good of the community as a whole, than the prosecution."
He dismissed suggestions made by Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble that Mr Finucane and Lurgan lawyer Rosemary Nelson had 'a clear terrorist connection'.
"At the coroner's inquest, the RUC officer in charge of the investigation made it clear there was no tie that he knew of between Patrick Finucane and the IRA and that he was simply a solicitor doing his duty," Cory said.
"That would seem to be quite clear and strong evidence."
PSNI police chief Hugh Orde has also rejected Mr Trimble's allegations, which have infuriated the Nelson and Finucane families.
There have been numerous calls on the British to hold a public inquiry into the murder of Mr Finucane.
The US State Department intensified pressure after an official yesterday said Washington was concerned about plans to delay an inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder.
A US State Department official said Washington was concerned about plans to delay an inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder until all criminal prosecutions had been completed.
He said it was his department's view that prosecutions should be conducted as "quickly as possible".
The human rights organisation Amnesty International described the government's failure to establish an immediate public inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder as "shameful".
Meanwhile, a former senior United Nations representative, Param Cumaraswamy has repeasted a call for a public inquiry into the killing first issued in his official 1998 report.
Speaking on BBC Radio, Mr Cumaraswamy said the victims of those concerned had suffered enough.
"Judge Cory was correct in saying that if we wait for this prosecution it could continue and be delayed for another two or three years," he said.
"That is unreasonable, and as I mentioned before, justice delayed is justice denied.
"A great deal of injustice would be done to the victims in this whole thing.
"The family of Pat Finucane have had this crusade going on for the last 14 years or so for this initial inquiry."
Mr Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein said today the "double standards and contradictions in the position of the British government are obvious".
"They are deliberately attempting to conceal the truth around the policy of collusion and the murder of citizens. Judge Cory's remarks today increase the pressure on the British government to grasp the reality and end the policy of concealment and proceed with the inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane," he said.
Reports today indicate that the British government is to announce some form of peace and reconciliation commission shortly after Easter in an effort to deflect criticism over the Finucane decision and its handling of other truth and human rights issues.
* Meanwhile, Ken Barrett, awaiting trial for the murder Pat Finucane, has been moved to an unspecified jail in England. Barrett was transferred on Thursday when the Cory report was released by the British government. His trial begins in September and could take two or three years.
The move was reportedly at his own request, but has raised suspicions. Almost all of those who took part in the plot to kill Mr Finucane have since died violent deaths or in mysterious circumstances, and it is possible that Barrett is merely concerned for his own safety.
Saturday-Monday, 3-5 April, 2004
Nelson diary reveals FRU/UDA training misssions
By Republican News
The prison diary of Brian Nelson, the chief intelligence officer of the unionist paramilitary UDA, show that the British Army and the RUC police trained, armed and directed the UDA's death squads during its campaign of sectarian murder in the North.
A transcript of Nelson's prison diary has revealed details of an extensive training regime, with armed UDA men carrying out training missions in the Mourne Mountains under the protection of British Army intelligence.
Nelson, an agent of the British Army's Force Research Unit (FRU), oversaw scores of murder attempts on nationalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Among them was the shooting dead of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane in front of his family in February 1989.
Nelson compiled intelligence files on hundreds of nationalists. More than 80 of the people on his files were attacked by loyalist death squads, and 29 died.
Nelson died last year in mysterious circumstances, reportedly a brain haemorrhage.
According to his prison journal, his British army handlers assured him that the paramilitaries would not encounter "friendly forces" -- including the RUC police -- while on exercises.
"I had always been concerned ... that some day we would be engaged in such activities and find ourselves up against covert SAS action," Nelson wrote.
"We finished the debrief after my having been reassured that there would be no friendly forces in the area in which we were going to be ... It wouldn't be the first time the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.
"Before such escapades, I always ensured that my handlers were informed as to the actual areas that we would be training in."
Nelson's journal reveals that, during his career as a British agent, the UDA was helped by the North's security forces at every stage of its development. Its training was supervised by Nelson, assisted by military intelligence.
During this period, Nelson also travelled to South Africa to obtain a huge arms supply for the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance.
The deal with South African agents was known to Nelson's handlers and is thought to have been cleared by at least one unnamed British government minister.
Cory confirmed the involvement of the British Army in the arms deal and the FRU's payment of Nelson's expenses on his first trip to South Africa in 1985.
Its intelligence gathering and targeting was managed and supervised by Nelson's military handlers. Cory noted a statement by Nelson's handler in February 1989 that "Nelson initiates most of the targeting".
At least three British agents are known to have been involved in the murder of Pat Finucane. Nelson, at the behest of his handlers, provided the intelligence.
The British government's reaffirmation of its decision to reject calls for an immediate public inquiry into Finucane's murder has fuelled questions about its intentions. A full examination of Nelson's role within the UDA could lift the lid on Britain's dirtiest secrets in the North.
KERR'S EVIDENCE 'MISLEADING'
Meanwhile, the former head of the FRU, Brigadier Gordon Kerr, is under fresh pressure after Judge Cory cast doubt on the evidence he gave at a trial where Brian Nelson was accused of murder.
Despite his admitted involvement in eight murders and nearly 40 other attempted murders, Nelson was only charged with five counts of conspiracy to murder.
When Nelson stood trial in 1992, Kerr claimed in court his agent had saved 217 lives.
Following Brig Kerr's evidence Nelson was sentenced to 10 years in prison, serving just five years before he was released from prison and given a new identity by the British army.
However, retired Canadian judge Peter Cory found that Nelson's activities within the UDA had in fact led to only one life being saved.
On that occasion in May 1988 a decision had only been taken to stop the attack on a Catholic taxi driver because Nelson was the driver of the car to be used in the murder.
"The evidence given by the Commanding Officer (CO) Fru, at Nelson's trial could only be described as misleading," he said.
Tuesday-Wednesday, 6-7 April, 2004
Finucane inquiry? Not now, not ever
By Brian Feeney
Why does the Finucane case stand out from all the others Judge Peter Cory examined? Why is the British government refusing to hold a public inquiry into that case yet offering no objection to inquiries into the killings of Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and Billy Wright?
Paradoxically we already know more about the killing of Pat Finucane than about the other three cases together. The Finucane murder has been the focus of one inquiry by Sir John Stevens and has figured in two others he conducted since September 1989. Together his inquiries have generated four tonnes of documents. Last April's report alone ran to over 3,000 pages we're told, though only 19 pages were made public.
It is therefore certain that the British government already knows the whole truth about the Finucane case because you can be sure in Stevens's secret reports he has detailed not only who dunnit, but who knew who dunnit and who didn't prevent it. Is it because they know just how explosive the truth is that the British government is so reluctant to share it with the public and that they have gone to such extraordinary lengths to conceal that truth?
In his report on the Finucane case, as in the others, Judge Cory concludes that since the Weston Park negotiations were 'an integral part of the implementation of the Good Friday Accord... failure to hold a public inquiry as quickly as it is reasonably possible to do so could be seen as a cynical breach of faith'. Clearly the British government is prepared to be seen in that light. So nothing new there.
Nevertheless it's a high price to pay. Why pay it? One reason is that while public inquiries into the murders of Hamill, Nelson and Wright may reveal individual instances of criminal activity by security force personnel on an ad hoc basis, we already know a public inquiry in the Finucane case will pull aside the curtain on systematic, structural conspiracy between British security forces and loyalist terrorists as described by Stevens last April and Cory last week.
There's an even wider issue though. Some inkling of what's at stake emerged in an adjournment debate on the Stevens Report Kevin McNamara MP secured last May. The British administration had sneakily waited until the day the House of Commons rose for the Easter recess to release the Stevens Report and managed to bury it pretty successfully. Indeed much the same ploy as with Cory's reports.
The redoubtable McNamara, the best critic in Westminster of this government's Irish policies, was, as usual, on his own, fielding interruptions from unionist MPs. No SDLP MP was present for the debate.
McNamara's most telling point and most dangerous for the British government was the extent of involvement of politicians in the conspiracy. As McNamara said, the 'Stevens Report's stark message is that successive British governments have sanctioned murder, that they have employed agents and given them license to kill.' A public inquiry would mean subpoenas for former secretaries of state and attorneys-general, the director and coordinator of intelligence at Stormont at relevant periods, the then GOC Sir John Wilsey, and the then chief constable Sir Hugh Annesley who, according to Cory, told the GOC not to give Stevens 'access to intelligence documents or information or the units supplying them'.
A public inquiry in the Finucane case would also confront what McNamara called the MOD's 'guerrilla campaign of evasion'. An inquiry would not need to be expensive, McNamara told the Commons because the answers are already in government files. 'An internal trawl and political will could have saved millions of pounds.'
Finally, a public inquiry in the Finucane case could mean prosecutions of senior military and political figures and senior securocrats. As McNamara said, Stevens is investigating whether the concealment of documents and information was sanctioned, and if so, at what levels? A public inquiry would attempt to ascertain how far up the line knowledge of the illegal activities of Brian Nelson, the FRU and some members of RUC Special Branch went. In short, a Finucane inquiry would expose the complete methodology the British administration instructed its security forces to employ during the last stages of the conflict here. The British government knows that if it were to throw senior officers and senior bureaucrats to the wolves, they would appear before an inquiry and point their fingers upwards. 'I was only obeying orders'. If they were going to go down they would make damn sure they would drag down as many politicians with them as they could. That's why there's little chance of a Finucane inquiry.
Copyright © 2004 Irish News