Pat Finucane assassination | Prime Minister stonewalls family over inquiry

Cameron’s proposal is ‘Widgery 2011’ says Seamus Finucane

David Cameron

» BY PEADAR WHELAN

THE British Government has point-blank refused to hold a public inquiry into the UDA assassination of defence lawyer Pat Finucane at home in front of his family in 1989. The killing is engulfed in widespread beliefs that British Government security services, the British Army or the RUC - or all three - and British ministers themselves were involved.
The Finucane family received the devastating news at a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street on Tuesday 11th October.
Refusing to allow a public inquiry into the 1989 killing, Cameron instead proposed an 18-month examination of the case carried out by Sir Desmond de Silva QC.
So angry were the Finucane family on being informed of the refusal that they walked out of the meeting. Geraldine Finucane said afterwards: “I am so angry and so insulted by being brought to Downing Street to hear what the Prime Minister had on offer.”
The Finucane family went on to accuse Cameron of reneging on commitments to open a public inquiry.
John Finucane, Pat’s son, explained that up until a matter of weeks ago the family was still engaged in negotiations with Secretary of State Owen Paterson aimed at finalising the terms of reference for a full public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s execution. Indeed, the plans for that inquiry were believed to be so far advanced that the British Government was reportedly briefing those senior political and security figures who were likely to be called to give evidence.
“Over the past 12 months we have been in talks with the British Government about a public inquiry and what form it might take,” John said. “Not once during that time was this review process even mentioned
Speaking to An Phoblacht, Seamus Finucane, Pat’s brother, who attended the meeting in Downing Street, said he told David Cameron that his apology was “hollow” and that the process Cameron suggested “only dealt with the needs and concerns of the British Government and Establishment and not the family. It was another attempt to neutralise the concerns within the nationalist community about collusion.”
Seamus Finucane also told Cameron that his refusal to instigate a public inquiry was “a retrograde step from what he had achieved through his apology to the Bloody Sunday families”.
Another concern for the Finucane family is that, by his actions, Cameron has reneged on the Weston Park Agreement which accepted the need for inquiries into the deaths of Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill, Billy Wright, RUC members Bob Buchanan and Harry Breen (killed by the IRA in South Armagh) as well as the Finucane killing.
Retired Canadian Judge Peter Cory investigated these cases and supported calls for inquiries.
The Nelson, Hamill and Wright inquiries have concluded. The Buchanan/Breen inquiry is underway. The British Government has now stonewalled the Finucane family with a decision that clearly kicks any hope of the British Government taking part in an open inquiry into touch.
Cameron, in his meeting with the Finucane family, admitted that Pat’s killing was the result of collusion. But that was only stating the obvious.
The Stevens Inquiry - consisting of three inquiries set up by the British Government and led by Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan Police chief from 2000 to 2005 - established that there had been collusion between the British security and military forces, the RUC and loyalist death squads.
Judge Peter Cory’s findings underpinned that conclusion.
The real questions in all this are about how far up the British Establishment chain of command does the evidence about the Finucane killing, in particular, and collusion, in general, go?
Four weeks before Pat Finucane was assassinated, Conservative Party Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg took to the floor of the British parliament to declare that some solicitors in the North were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”.
Three of the principal participants in murdering Pat Finucane were agents operating with the British crown forces: Ken Barrett and William Stobie were RUC Special Branch agents while Brian Nelson was an operative with the British Army’s elite and highly secretive ‘Force Research Unit’, one of its ‘dirty tricks’ units. The FRU, under Colonel Gordon Kerr, was based in the British Army HQ in the Six Counties, Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn.
Former British Tory Defence Minister Tom King, who also served as Secretary of State in the North, described Nelson in a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions as a “valuable agent”. Nelson was facing charges connected to the Finucane and other killings but after a plea bargain received 10 years.
The growing suspicion now is that this British Government, the one that has engaged in a protracted process of negotiations with the Finucane family about the scope of a public inquiry, has been ‘nobbled’ and what happened on October 11th, according to Seamus Finucane, “reinforces our belief that the responsibility for Pat’s killing goes to the heart of the British Government and Establishment”.
Questions are already being asked about the independence and objectivity of Sir Desmond Da Silva, who has been named as the man to carry out David Cameron’s review of the evidence in the Finucane case.
According to the Conservative website www.politicshome.com, which is lobbying Cameron to have Da Silva nominated to the British House of Lords, he held elected office from 1980 to 1995, has been involved in the Conservative Party in the past through the Centre for Policy Studies and the centre-right Bow Group. He is described as “a loyal Conservative”.