RUC detectives indict RUC Special Branch over Pat Finucane murder investigation

THREE former RUC officers are taking legal action that could further expose Special Branch’s role in killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989.

Former CID officers Alan Simpson, Johnston ‘Jonty’ Brown and Trevor McIlwrath lodged legal papers with Belfast High Court last year in which they are suing the PSNI over failures into the inquiry into Finucane’s killing.

The trio of retired RUC detectives say that Special Branch obstructed their investigation into the gun murder of Finucane who was shot dead by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) as he was preparing Sunday dinner with his wife Geraldine, who was wounded in the attack, and their three children.

One of the former RUC men, Detective Superintendent Alan Simpson, went so far as to accuse Special Branch of “organising” the Finucane killing.

Simpson told the Belfast morning newspaper, The Irish News:

“I have all these organisations – IRA, INLA, the UFF, the UVF – all doing murders in north Belfast. I do not need Special Branch coming up and organising one and then standing in a room . . . keeping quiet and all the time knowing the true facts and leading me astray.”

Simpson said that Special Branch withheld information and that one senior RUC officer visited him and told him not to get “too deeply involved”.

Another of those involved in the legal action, ‘Jonty’ Brown, revealed that a recording he made of UDA gunman Ken Barrett (pictured), in which he admitted shooting the defence lawyer, went missing.

Brown maintains that he was “instructed” to record a second interview with Barrett in the company of a Special Branch officer and this time he was to make no mention of the Finucane assassination.

This second tape was subsequently handed over to the Stevens Inquiry into collusion, led by the former head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens.  

In 2004, Barrett pleaded guilty and was convicted of killing Finucane.

Both Brown and his colleague Trevor McIlwrath were arrested by investigators from the Police Ombudsman’s office investigating the killing of Raymond McCord by the UVF’s Mount Vernon gang and its leader, Special Branch agent Mark Haddock.

Solicitor Kevin Winters, who is acting for the men said the three former RUC officers feel they have no option but to take legal action.

“This litigation represents a challenging alternative narrative on collusion,” he said. “Up until now it has not been articulated enough through the courts.”