Pat Finucane assassination | Papers expose British deceit

British Prime Minister is a ‘dishonourable man’

John and Geraldine Finucane and Peter Madden address a highly-charged press conference in Belfast

BY PEADAR WHELAN

GERALDINE FINUCANE, widow of assassinated defence lawyer Pat Finucane, has described British Prime Minister David Cameron as a “dishonourable man”.
Addressing a packed and highly-charged press conference on Friday 14th October in Belfast attended by An Phoblacht, she accused Cameron of reneging on a promise to the family to hold an open, public inquiry into the 1989 killing of her husband.
Still angry over how she and her family were treated by Cameron and Secretary of State Owen Paterson at their Downing Street meeting on Tuesday 11th October, Geraldine Finucane explained her family’s decision to go public on their contacts with the British was to set the record straight on how the British government “misled my family”.
Pat’s widow rubbished claims by Secretary of State Paterson that the family were brought to Downing Street “to allow the Prime Minister to apologise personally”.
Also present at the press conference was the Finucane family solicitor, Peter Madden.
Madden outlined, in great detail, the contacts he’d had with legal representatives of the British Government as they thrashed out details of the type of inquiry that would best serve the interests of the family in their pursuit of the truth of Pat Finucane’s killing.
Documents provided to the media proved that the negotiations between the family, their representatives and the British Government’s legal team were about establishing the type and remit of an inquiry.
The review that Cameron proposed in the Downing Street meeting was not detailed anywhere. In fact, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), in one of its documents, outlined three examples of current inquiries “as an aid to discussion to assist the family in making representations to the Secretary of State”.
Of these three examples the family believed that the Baha Mousa Inquiry into the killing of an Iraqi man, beaten to death by British soldiers in Basra, was one that, “we could participate in”.
This statutory inquiry appears to have “a procedure agreed between the Inquiry and the Ministry of Defence for the production and onward disclosure of material”.
What is also significant, from the Finucanes’ point of view, is that Paragraph 29 of the protocol for the production of documents in the Baha Mousa Inquiry allows the inquiry chairperson to decide what should be restricted.
This is a move away from the Inquiries Act of 2005 which allows the relevant minister decide what documents should be made available to an inquiry.
The Finucanes have continually rejected an inquiry under the terms of the 2005 Act, believing the Minister of Defence, for example, would hide behind it and refuse to hand over any relevant material.
While the Finucane family and their legal representatives were clear that the final decision on an inquiry would be made by David Cameron, “the indications from Government officials was encouraging”, said Geraldine Finucane.
“In a recent telephone conversation between a senior NIO official and Peter Madden, we were told the Prime Minister was confident we would be happy with what was on offer.”
The opposite turned out to be the case.
Dismissing the proposed Da Silva Review, Geraldine Finucane said:
“My family and I have no confidence in this process. We cannot be expected to take the British Prime Minister’s word that it will be effective when he is reneging on a Government commitment in order to establish it.
“His actions prove beyond doubt that the word of the British Prime Minister is not to be trusted”.