US Congress hearing on Pat Finucane murder and collusion

UDA quartermaster and RUC Special Branch informer William Stobie heard on the radio that evening about Pat Finucane’s murder and knew immediately that neither Special Branch nor the RUC had intervened to prevent the murder

THE US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs sub-committee hearing in Washington DC on 15 May heard an appeal from Pat’s eldest son for US political figures to press the British Government to honour its promise to hold a public inquiry into the 1989 murder.

The sub-committee was chaired by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ).

Chairperson Smith, joined by his Congressional colleagues on the sub-committee, expressed concern at the outset of the hearing over the British Government’s refusal to meet its commitments at Weston Park by declining to hold a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder.

The hearing called two witnesses to testify.  The first was Michael Finucane, eldest son of the murdered solicitor. Michael Finucane became a solicitor after his father’s murder and has his own law firm in Dublin. 

Pat Finucane noted that the review conducted by Desmond de Silva, a well-known Conservative barrister appointed by the British Government to review government documents on his father’s murder, failed fundamentally to meet standards of a credible independent inquiry under domestic or international standards.

De Silva was given no power to compel witnesses to testify and failed to speak to people who were central to the events of the murder. No family member or counsel was permitted to review or question the material relied upon by de Silva.

Michael Finucane observed:

“No former politicians were interviewed, nor were a number of key intelligence personnel, including the former head of military intelligence in Northern Ireland, who was in charge at the time of my father’s murder.”

De Silva assigned responsibility only to institutions no longer in existence and people who are (conveniently) dead. 

The second witness, retired human rights attorney Brigadier General James Cullen, testified about his meeting in 1999 with William Stobie, Ulster Defence Association quartermaster and Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch informer who kept and supplied the weapons used to murder Pat Finucane.

His meeting was arranged in response to a reward offer made in a newspaper in the North of Ireland.

Stobie acknowledged he had worked as an agent for the RUC Special Branch since 1987.  He made clear that when he was alerted a week before Pat Finucane’s murder to have weapons ready for the following Sunday morning, he promptly informed his Special Branch handlers about the instructions he had received.

He contacted Special Branch later in the week and was told again to carry out the instructions. When he arrived at the agreed meeting place on Sunday morning to turn the weapons over to the kill team, he noticed one of his Special Branch handlers was parked across the street in an unmarked car.

Stobie assumed the Special Branch would intervene directly or through the regular RUC. As he was leaving the meeting place after the kill team, he observed the Special Branch car make a U-turn and drive away in the opposite direction to the direction taken by the kill team.

He heard on the radio that evening about Pat Finucane’s murder and knew immediately that neither Special Branch nor the RUC had intervened to prevent the murder.

Both witnesses concluded that the refusal of the British Government to conduct a credible inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder fuelled the arguments of those who never had, or lost, confidence in the willingness of the British Government to uphold the rule of law in an impartial manner in the North of Ireland. 

Congressman Smith had invited the Irish Government to submit its views about the Finucane Inquiry, which it did.

A statement by Jane Winters, former Secretary of British Irish Human Rights Watch, was also submitted to the sub-committee.