Finucane wife 'cannot come to terms with murder'
The mother of the so-called forgotten victim in the Pat Finucane collusion scandal has spoken of the need for the murdered solicitor’s wife to move on with her life.
Ivy Lambert, whose son Adam was also shot dead by the same UDA terror gang, said: “It is a pity of her.
“She just cannot come to terms with it.
“She is living in the past.”
Mrs Lambert, 80, from Ballygawley, Co Tyrone, said her family had not called for an inquiry or a re-investigation by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) because they did not want to re-live the horror of the tragedy.
She said: “We tried to put it behind us.
“We believed that was the best way that we could move forward.
“He’s gone and there is nothing that we can do about it.
“We would have gone to the end of the earth if we thought we could have had him back but we can’t.
“We do feel that he has been forgotten but a lot are forgotten and we just have to accept that.”
Adam Lambert, 19, a Protestant student was shot dead while on work experience at a building site in the Highfield estate in west Belfast on November 9 1987.
UDA men who had been drinking in a Belfast club decided to retaliate against Catholics after hearing about the IRA Enniskillen poppy day bombing which claimed the lives of 11 people the previous day.
Mistakenly, they believed Adam was a Catholic member of the IRA named Gerry.
William Stobie the UDA’s quartermaster, who was implicated in the murder of Pat Finucane, was the getaway driver for Adam’s killers and became a Special Branch informer after being arrested and questioned about the student’s death.
In his 2003 report into collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens said there was enough evidence to conclude that the murders of Pat Finucane and Adam Lambert were preventable.
Despite those findings, Mrs Lambert said her family still supported the authorities.
“The HET asked us about it and we asked them to drop it,” she said.
“We did not want to go through the whole thing again.
“We had already accepted that Adam was gone.
“We support the police and the authorities and we just accepted that we could not have prevented Adam’s death.
“There was nothing we could have done about it.”
Mrs Lambert said she did not want to be consumed by the brutal nature and circumstances surrounding her youngest son’s death.
And, although she conceded she could not forgive the gunmen, said – with the cross-community support from the rural Co Tyrone community – she and her husband were able to continue with a normal life for the sake of their other three children.
“I do not think we have to forgive his killers,” she said.
“But we did not let it intrude into our lives and make us bitter.
“I will leave it to a higher person than us to forgive them.”
Mrs Lambert said her family would take an interest in Desmond de Silva’s inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder but said the outcome would not change their attitude.
She said: “We just had to accept Adam’s death and move on.
“It was very difficult but it was 25 years ago now.
“He has not been forgotten by friends and family.
“I just listen and take it all in but we are not really interested in an inquiry into Adam’s death – definitely not.
“The reason we are happy, and we are happy, is because we were able to accept that Adam was gone.
“When you look back, these things happened in the immediate aftermath of Enniskillen and feelings were running high.
“Things were happening on either side – they were tit for tat – and things were done in the heat of the minute by both sides because tensions were heightened.”
