Finucane’s wife quits Downing St meeting over QC review plan

Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane was murdered in 1989
The widow of murdered Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane said today she felt “angry” and “insulted” after David Cameron told her he was proposing a review of her husband’s case by a QC (British government lawyer).
After meeting the British Prime Minister at his offices in Number 10 Downing Street, Geraldine Finucane told reporters the whole family was “very disappointed” and would not support the proposal.
The Finucanes want a full independent inquiry into the Mr Finucane’s murder in 1989 by a British-run loyalist death squad. Speaking in Downing Street, Mrs Finucane said: “I am so angry and so insulted by being brought to Downing Street today to hear what the Prime Minister had on offer. “He is offering a review. He wants a QC to read the papers in my husband’s case and that is how he expects to reach the truth. “All of us are very upset and very disappointed.” She added that she was “so angry with the Prime Minister that I actually called a halt to the meeting”.
Background
Patrick Finucane, a prominent criminal defence and civil rights lawyer, was shot dead by two masked men in front of his wife and three children at his home in Belfast, North of Ireland on 12 February 1989.
Twenty-two years later, the government of the UK has still failed to keep its repeated promises to establish a genuinely independent public inquiry into all of the circumstances of Patrick Finucane’s death, including into credible evidence that UK state agents may have colluded in the killing.
Patrick Finucane’s was one of the leading criminal law firms in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, acting in defence of those detained or charged under emergency legislation. He was instrumental in arguing against practices which were in violation of international human rights standards.
In the aftermath of his death, extensive and compelling evidence began to emerge that his killing took place within the context of widespread state collusion with armed groups. Further evidence has transpired since then, giving rise to a strong suspicion that state agencies may have played a part in attempting to cover up state collusion in his murder.

Ever since he was killed, Patrick Finucane’s family have campaigned for a genuinely independent public inquiry into the circumstances of his death.

In July 2003 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that “the proceedings following the death of Patrick Finucane failed to provide a prompt and effective investigation into the allegations of collusion by security personnel”. It found that there had been, in this case, a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life.

Kenneth Barrett, a former loyalist paramilitary, was convicted of Patrick Finucane’s murder in 2003. Since he had pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including that of the murder of Patrick Finucane, no significant information about alleged state collusion in the killing or about the alleged subsequent official cover-up emerged in court.

The same year Sir John Stevens, a senior UK police officer who carried out three inquiries into allegations of collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the North of Ireland, confirmed that his investigations had uncovered evidence of “collusion, the wilful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder”.

The full findings of the investigations conducted by John Stevens have, however, remained secret, not only from the public but also from the Finucane family and their lawyers.

In September 2004, the then Secretary of State for the North of Ireland, the Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP, announced that “steps should now be taken to enable the establishment of an inquiry into the death of Patrick Finucane”.

The UK government continues to insist that an inquiry in this case can only be held under legislation – the Inquiries Act 2005 – which will effectively extinguish the chances of a genuinely independent and effective investigation. In July 2008, the Human Rights Committee, an expert human rights body of the United Nations, expressed its concern at this legislation, because it “allows the government minister who established an inquiry to control important aspects of that inquiry”. A minister who set up an inquiry under the 2005 Act could, for instance, order that the public be excluded from part of the hearings, and could order that material be withheld from the final published report of the inquiry.

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