Finucane murder report awaited

12 December 2012 Last updated at 03:41 ET

A senior lawyer's review of the extent of security force collusion in the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane is being published later.

Mr Finucane was shot by loyalists in front of his wife and children at his north Belfast home in February 1989.

It was one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles.

Last year Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged there was state collusion in Mr Finucane's murder and apologised to his family.

Sir Desmond de Silva QC carried out the review at the government's request. The Finucanes want a public inquiry as they fear the full truth will not emerge.

After meeting David Cameron in Downing Street last year, Geraldine Finucane told journalists:"I would just like to say that I can barely speak to the media on this occasion because I am so angry and so insulted by being brought to Downing Street today to hear what the prime minister had on offer.

"He has offered a review."

Loyalist paramilitaries, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) shot 38-year-old Mr Finucane 14 times in front of his wife and three young children as they sat at the dinner table.

The UFF was a name used by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) to carry out paramilitary attacks.

He was a high-profile solicitor and his clients included IRA hunger strikers, and families involved in shoot-to-kill allegations against the police.

The publication of Mr de Silva's report follows a review of all the existing documentation on the murder. It was not a fresh inquiry.

Commons statement

Prime Minister David Cameron is due to make a statement on its findings to the House of Commons later.

Continue reading the main story

Pat Finucane, 38, was a prominent defence solicitor in Belfast.

He was married with three children and was shot by loyalists in front of his family at his north Belfast home on 12 February 1989.

The family were eating a Sunday meal, when gunmen broke down the door and shot him 14 times. His wife was injured in the attack.

Mr Finucane was the first defence counsel to be killed in Northern Ireland's Troubles. His clients included IRA hunger strikers, including Bobby Sands, and families involved in shoot-to-kill allegations against the police.

His murder was one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles because of long-running allegations of state collusion.

Mr Finucane's family have said the review falls far short of the full inquiry for which they have campaigned for years.

Speaking last month, Mr Finucane's widow, Geraldine, said the announcement that the review would be published in full was not a guarantee of openness and transparency.

"Vital information has already been removed from the report by the de Silva review team prior to checking by security officials, MOD personnel and the PSNI," she said.

"By the time the report is made public, it will have been sanitised completely, to ensure that the least possible amount of discomfort is caused to the government and the British state."

Mr de Silva said his report would include a volume of the key relevant documents relating to the murder which was, he said, "an exceptional step for a review such as this to take". He said he felt this was important to ensure public confidence in his report.

The year before he was murdered, Mr Finucane had defended former hunger striker Pat McGeown, who had been charged with helping to organise the murder of two Army corporals who drove into an IRA funeral cortege in west Belfast. Mr Finucane succeeded in getting the charges against his client dropped.

However, it is claimed a double agent passed a photograph of the solicitor taken outside the court to the UFF gunman who carried out his murder.

The double agent was Brian Nelson, who compiled information on potential targets for the UFF whilst at the same time working for British army intelligence.

Police accused

The gunman was Ken Barrett, who later told the BBC Panorama's that he had carried out 10 loyalist murders. Barrett was found guilty of Mr Finucane's murder in 2004.

Two years earlier Barrett had told Panorama's John Ware, in a secretly recorded conversation, that a police officer had suggested he target Mr Finucane.

"To be honest," claimed Barrett, "Finucane would have been alive today if the peelers hadn't interfered... solicitors were kind of way taboo, if you know what I mean?

"We used a lot of Roman Catholic solicitors ourselves, they were taboo.. you didn't touch them."

Although the former Metropolitan police chief Lord Stevens found there had been collusion in the murder, Mr Finucane's family have always insisted only a full inquiry would determine how high up the chain of command responsibility ran.

The case featured in the negotiations on restoring devolution at Stormont and Tony Blair promised to set up an inquiry. However the Finucane family believed the law under which it would operate - the 2005 Inquiries Act - would enable the government to interfere and suppress unwelcome details.

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