[A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland, Finucane case

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

New inquiry calls after Finucane guilty plea

Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Tuesday September 14, 2004
The Guardian

The government is facing mounting pressure to establish a public inquiry
into the murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane after a former Special
Branch informer yesterday pleaded guilty to assassinating the lawyer at his
Belfast home.

Ken Barrett, 41, a hardline loyalist paramilitary, was one of two masked men
who broke into Mr Finucane's house and shot him 14 times in front of his
wife Geraldine and their three children on February 12 1989.

The murder of the prominent lawyer was one of the most controversial
killings of Northern Ireland's 30-year Troubles. But although successive
investigations uncovered evidence that security forces collaborated with
loyalist paramilitaries to carry out the murder, the government had refused
to open a public inquiry, arguing that it would prejudice Barrett's trial.

A retired Canadian judge, Peter Cory, recommended a public inquiry last year
after finding documentary proof that MI5, the army and Special Branch knew
about a plot to kill Mr Finucane and failed to act. He criticised the
government for citing Barrett's trial as a reason for not proceeding.

But after Barrett pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial at Belfast
crown court, nationalist politicians and the Finucane family demanded an
immediate public inquiry, saying the government had no excuses left.

Barrett, a former commander in the Ulster Defence Association with a costly
gambling habit, had turned paid informer to get revenge on his bosses in the
loyalist terrorist organisation. He is the only person to be charged with
the Finucane murder.

Having denied the charges at earlier hearings, he pleaded guilty yesterday
to 12 charges, including the murder of Mr Finucane, and another count of
attempted murder, as well as stealing army weapons and membership of the
Ulster Freedom Fighters.

The court was told how one former Northern Ireland detective heard Barrett
confess to the Finucane murder in 1990.

That detective claims police intelligence officers sup pressed the
information, determined to protect Barrett as a source of information on
other UDA activities.

He was finally arrested in May 2003 after he had fled to England and was
living in a safe house in Eastbourne, Sussex, while the Metropolitan police
commissioner, Sir John Stevens, investigated collusion between security
forces and paramilitaries.

Outside court, former police officers described Barrett as a remorseless
killer who had bragged of killing 10 people.

Barrett, who has served 18 months, will be sentenced on Friday, but is
likely to be freed within weeks under the terms of the Good Friday
agreement.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said Barrett's guilty plea was the
result of a "sordid deal brokered by the British system" to prevent damaging
details coming out in a lengthy court case.

He said the government no longer had a "bogus argument" to prevent a
full-scale public inquiry.

Michael Finucane, Mr Finucane's son and a Dublin-based solicitor, said the
government must immediately honour its commitment to a public inquiry. The
SDLP said there should be no "last-minute fudge or prevarication" on the
terms of the inquiry.

------

'Guilty plea does not lift the lid'

Rosie Cowan
Tuesday September 14, 2004
The Guardian

For Michael Finucane, who was 17 when his father, Pat, was shot dead in
front of him, Ken Barrett's admission of guilt is just one small part of a
15-year fight for truth and justice which will only be ended by a full
public inquiry.

His family has always believed the British establishment pulled the strings
behind the loyalist paramilitaries who killed the Belfast solicitor in 1989,
and he is sanguine about Barrett's confession and the prospect of his early
release under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.

"Ken Barrett is not a major priority to me, he never was," said Mr Finucane,
now a Dublin-based solicitor. "I was surprised at his guilty plea but not
hugely so.
"But I don't reckon he is anything like approaching the top of the food
chain as regards my father's murder.

"The answers lie in Britain, in Downing Street, Whitehall and with the
Ministry of Defence.

"Barrett's conviction is just one part of an ongoing process. It has done
nothing to lift the lid on who directed, ordered, financed and facilitated
the murder of my father.

"We are as much in the dark after this prosecution regarding the exact
involvement of the security forces as we were beforehand. I'll feel much
more satisfied on the opening day of a public inquiry.

"The British government promised at peace talks at Weston Park that it would
abide by the decision of Peter Cory, [the retired Canadian judge appointed
to examine alleged collusion in eight controversial murders including
Finucane's].

"He recommended a public inquiry and the government then said Barrett's
prosecution had to come first. Now that is out of the way, there is no
excuse not to honour that agreement."

-----

 A tale of cover-up and conspiracy

Cold-blooded killer had boasted about murder of solicitor

Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Tuesday September 14, 2004
The Guardian

Ken Barrett is the first person brought to justice for the murder of Belfast
solicitor Pat Finucane. But his admission of guilt, 15 years after the
killing, is just one part of a shadowy web of collusion, conspiracy and
cover-up which made this one of the most controversial crimes in three
decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

Although the Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters, the
loyalist terror group to which Barrett belonged, claimed responsibility for
the hit, the Finucane family have always been convinced that the security
forces aided paramilitaries in a plot they insist went to the heart of the
British establishment, and that only a public inquiry will bring out the
truth.

Last year, Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who has
carried out inquiries in Northern Ireland over the past 15 years, confirmed
that several police and soldiers did indeed collude with the terrorists who
carried out the shooting.

Sir John's investigations exposed a terrifying world of undercover spies who
would seemingly go to any lengths to win the war against the IRA.

He found that police and army officers allowed informers and agents to
operate "without effective control and participate in terrorist crimes" and
that more than 20 loyalist murders, including Finucane's, from the mid-1980s
to early 1990s, could have been prevented.

Sir John has forwarded files on more than 20 former and serving police and
army officers to the Crown Prosecution Service. They include Brigadier
Gordon Kerr, now the British military attache in Beijing, who in 1989 headed
the murky military intelligence operation in Northern Ireland, the Force
Research Unit.

Finucane, a 39-year-old Catholic who had successfully represented many top
republicans, including IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, was a thorn in the
British establishment's side.

Three weeks before the murder, Douglas Hogg, then a junior home office
minister, told the Commons that certain solicitors in Northern Ireland were
unduly sympathetic to the IRA.

Finucane was having dinner with his wife, Geraldine, and their three
children in their north Belfast home on February 12 1989, when two masked
gunmen broke down the door with sledgehammers. They pumped 14 shots, from a
.38 revolver and a 9mm Browning automatic pistol, all of which hit Finucane
and one of which ricocheted, hitting his wife's foot. The killers made their
getaway in a stolen taxi.

The UDA said it carried out the hit because Finucane was a high ranking IRA
officer, a claim staunchly denied by his family and friends.

Although Finucane's brothers had strong IRA links, the solicitor counted
prominent loyalists as well as republicans among his clients, and police at
his inquest said there was absolutely no evidence to suggest he was in the
IRA.

But almost from the moment the triggers were pulled, dark suggestions
surfaced that police officers and British soldiers helped have Finucane
killed.

There were persistent allegations that detectives had suggested the lawyer
as a target to loyalists. Police roadblocks near the Finucane home were
lifted just before the murder, and the involvement of various army and
police agents emerged over the next few years.

In 1991, Barrett, by then a police informer, boasted about killing Finucane
to an RUC detective, Johnston "Jonty" Brown, who secretly recorded the
conversation. He said Barrett told him Finucane was still holding a fork in
his hand as he fired several shots into his head. Mr Brown gave the tape to
Special Branch but it went missing and Barrett was not arrested. The
detective said Barrett, a compulsive gambler, was one of the most
cold-blooded killers he had ever met, and once admitted carrying out 10
murders, a claim he had no reason to doubt.

In 1992 a UDA/army double agent, Brian Nelson, claimed to the BBC Panorama
programme that he had scouted the Finucane house weeks before the murder,
and passed on photographs and a dossier to loyalist killers, but tipped off
his army handlers about the murder plot. He was jailed after admitting
unrelated conspiracy to murder offences, and died of lung cancer last year.

In 1999, the Stevens team questioned Barrett about Mr Brown's evidence but
no charges were brought. The same year, William Stobie, a self-confessed
Special Branch informer and UDA quartermaster, was arrested. He admitted
supplying the guns used in the murder but said he had twice warned his
handlers about the threat. However, in November 2001, Stobie was freed when
the chief prosecution witness was ruled unfit to testify. In December, the
UDA shot Stobie dead, and a few weeks later, the Stevens team whisked
Barrett, also under threat from his former comrades, to safety in Sussex.

Barrett again talked about the murder, this time to the Panorama team. In a
programme broadcast in June 2002, he claimed a police officer told him
Finucane was a senior IRA man and had to be got rid of.

"The peelers wanted him whacked. We whacked him and that is the end of the
story," he said, also revealing that Nelson showed him Finucane's house and
gave him a photograph of the solicitor.

Meanwhile, police in England launched an elaborate sting operation to get
the evidence they needed to convict him.

Barrett's house was bugged, recording conversations between him and his
partner. A fake job advertisement was placed in a local paper, seeking a
driver. Barrett took the bait.

Drugs empire

His employers, two undercover police officers known only as "Steve" and
"Tom", tipped him hundreds of pounds and put him up in hotels around the
country, telling him they were running a drugs empire importing cannabis and
cocaine from Germany.

They persuaded him to talk about his paramilitary past by claiming they
found out about his connection to the Finucane case on the internet and
thought he had the potential to become a hit man for their operation.

In covert recordings, Barrett told them he shot Finucane, attempting to
justify it by saying the solicitor was a top IRA man.

Finucane wasn't just shot, he was "fucking massacred", according to Barrett,
who added: "I lost no sleep over it. All is fair in love and war. I have to
be honest, I whacked a few people in the past. People say, how do you sleep,
Ken? I sleep fine."

-----

 Don't dodge the issue of collusion

A public inquiry into Finucane's death can no longer be resisted

Gerry Adams
Tuesday September 14, 2004
The Guardian

This week the British and Irish governments and all the main parties in the
north of Ireland will be in Leeds Castle in Kent. Sinn Féin will be trying
to unblock the political impasse here. It will not be easy. There are major
issues to be crunched: around the need for all parties to participate fully
in the political institutions; policing and justice, and especially
agreement by unionists on the transfer of power on policing to the executive
and assembly within a specific timeframe; and the issue of armed groups and
of arms, human rights, equality and sectarianism.

One of the great imponderables in all of this is the attitude of the
Democratic Unionist Party. As the largest unionist party, its engagement is
necessary for progress. However, this is a party whose leader has said in
recent times that even if the IRA were to disappear at Leeds Castle his
party will not talk to Sinn Féin until sometime next year. Moreover, its
policy is the destruction of the Good Friday agreement. Hardly a stance to
encourage hope in the talks ahead.

Last week Tony Blair spelt out his goals for the talks. But in doing so he
placed responsibility for progress on the republicans and unionists. It is
true that republicans and unionists have much to do. And Sinn Féin, for our
part, wants a comprehensive, holistic agreement which brings closure to all
the outstanding issues. We don't want a two-stage or intermediary deal or
one that falls apart a few months later - we want a deal which brings an end
to the cyclical crises which have bedevilled this process since the Good
Friday agreement was reached in April 1998.

But Mr Blair cannot divorce his government from its responsibility for
creating the years of political instability, nor from its crucial role in
creating the political conditions in which an agreement can be reached in
Kent. Matters such as policing, demilitarisation, human rights and equality
and much more are not the property or responsibility of unionists or
republicans. They are the exclusive remit of the British government and they
are issues around which this government has made repeated promises which it
has then failed to deliver on.

One of the issues which has been on the agenda of all our discussions with
Mr Blair since first we met in 1997 is the issue of collusion. That is the
administrative practice by which British government agencies recruited,
trained, supplied information to, protected and armed unionist death squads
to kill opponents and civilians. Successive British governments have gone to
extraordinary lengths to cover up the involvement of their military,
intelligence and police agencies in the murder of citizens. The most famous
of these cases is that of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.

Since Pat's killing in February 1989 his family has campaigned for an
independent, international judicial inquiry. The British government has
resisted this. In July 2001 Downing Street and the Irish government asked a
retired Canadian judge Peter Cory to decide whether public inquiries were
justified in a number of cases, including Pat Finucane's. Mr Blair committed
to act on whatever Cory recommended. Judge Cory recommended a public
inquiry, but the British government said it could not proceed, citing the
trial of Ken Barrett, who yesterday pleaded guilty to Pat's murder. There is
now no reason to further delay a public inquiry.

There is a remarkable reluctance for the British government to get at the
truth of these matters. Why is this? Having spoken to Tony Blair and his
colleagues on this issue many times I know they are very conscious of the
fact that Pat Finucane's killing is only the tip of the iceberg.

The use by British forces of "friendly forces" to kill the enemy or
"terrorise the terrorists" has its roots in modern times in Kenya, Aden,
Cyprus and in almost 50 counter- insurgency wars fought by British
governments in the 1950s and 60s. Many of those involved in Ireland are
still in the British system. They still run agents here. Others are probably
now in Iraq.

Collusion and, specifically, the killing of Pat Finucane are serious matters
which the British government cannot continue dodging, especially in the
context of acts of completion as defined by Mr Blair for these negotiations.

Leeds Castle will see a serious effort being made by Sinn Féin to end the
crisis in the peace process. But the British government and the DUP must
play their full part, too. Our efforts have not been made easier by the
discovery last week that the home of a member of my staff had been bugged.
Not a good signal to send to republicans on the eve of crucial talks. I have
raised this with Mr. Blair but that's for another day. It would be much
better 15 years after Pat Finucane's murder if Mr Blair established a fully
independent international judicial inquiry as requested by the Finucane
family.