Finucane probe to heighten calls for full inquiry

With Sir Alasdair Fraser, the director of Public Prosecutions considering files against up to 20 police and army personnel who are believed to have been implicated by the three year investigation, only part of the report is to be published.

But it will be damming in several keys areas, heightening pressure on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to call an inquiry into all aspects of the Finucane killing.

The solicitor was shot dead at his north Belfast home in February 1989 by a gunman belonging to the Ulster Defence Association who was also working as a Special Branch informant at the time.

The man who supplied one of the weapons tipped off British military intelligence that a killing was to be carried out, but nothing was done to prevent it. He was later charged with the murder, but gunned down by former associates who wanted him silenced.

The Finucane family tonight said they expected the report to be nothing more than some sort of system analysis.

Michael Finucane, the solicitor’s son who is also a lawyer declared: “The report is an embodiment of broken promises and dishonoured commitments. It carries the hallmark of all Stevens’ work in Northern Ireland: ‘secrecy and repression’.”

The lawyer’s family refused to back the Stevens’ inquiry, his third.

Mr Finucane said the investigation was worthless because he claimed the intelligence system worked exactly as it was designed to.

He added: “Nothing went wrong. In the British government’s eyes the system worked perfectly.

“The policy in Northern Ireland was – and may yet be – to harness the killing potential of loyalist paramilitaries, to increase that potential through additional resources in the shape of weapons and information and to direct those resources against selected targets so that the government could be rid of its enemies.

“Simple policy. Simple operation. Simply chilling.”

Angry human rights campaigners have denounced plans to release just a section of the 3,000 page document, which took four years to compile at a cost of £4m (€5.8m).

Leading organisations including Amnesty International, British Irish Rights Watch and the Committee on the Administration of Justice have also urged the authorities to begin a judicial hearing.

“Continuing to delay such an inquiry may well result in other key testimonies eventually avoiding public scrutiny,” they said in a joint statement.

The full document will be handed over to Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Hugh Orde, who ran the Stevens’ inquiry before taking charge of the new force.

Mr Stevens’s detectives have interviewed 15,000 people, catalogued 4,000 exhibits, taken more than 5,500 statements and seized 6,000 documents in the past 14 years.

But he only plans to publish an overview of his new findings when he travels to Belfast, including recommendations on police and Army accountability.

Even calls for major restructuring of the security services would be dismissed by the Finucane family and others campaigning for a judicial inquiry.

Mr Stevens has questioned serving and former members of MI5 and Special Branch in a bid to finally get at the truth.

He has identified senior Ulster Defence Association members at the time, including men who were working as double agents for military intelligence.

The loyalist gang broke down the front door of the 38-year-old lawyer’s north Belfast home in February 1989 and pumped 14 bullets into him as he ate dinner with his wife Geraldine and their three children.

The UDA said he had been shot because he was a senior IRA officer, but Mr Stevens in his report tomorrow will again emphatically reject claims he had terror links.

But the collusion inquiry has extended far beyond the solicitor’s murder.

“This is the most extensive inquiry of its nature ever undertaken in the world,” Mr Stevens said.

“I do not intend to leave any stone unturned.”

One of those questioned is Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the British military attaché in Beijing who headed the Army’s secret Force Research Unit (FRU) in Belfast when the UDA murdered Mr Finucane.

Stevens’ detectives have also interviewed top loyalists about the shooting including:

:: Ken Barrett who allegedly confessed to the shooting and is now in hiding in Britain

:: William Stobie, who supplied the weapon, and

:: Jim Spence, another UDA boss.

On October 3, 1991 Barrett, allegedly confessed to RUC Detective Sergeant Johnston Brown that he shot Mr Finucane. The conversation was taped, but mysteriously the crucial piece of evidence went missing.

Mr Brown, who is now retired, claimed he was still unsure why Special Branch failed to act after the loyalist’s admission was made.

He told PA News today: “There could have been 100 reasons why they did not want to move at that time.

“People ask me why I didn’t complain about it in 1991. It’s because nobody would listen to me.”

But Mr Stevens’s report will confirm claims that police and Army colluded in a series of loyalist killings and then mounted a cover-up to protect informers such as Barrett.

The FRU also handled loyalist agents such as Brian Nelson, the UDA’s head of intelligence who passed on a photo of the lawyer to the gunmen.

In a bizarre twist of fate Nelson, who was jailed in 1992 for conspiracy to murder, died last week of a massive brain haemorrhage. A private funeral is to be held in England.

The ex-soldier took with him to the grave the secrets behind more than 30 killings he was linked to.

Nelson had been recruited in an attempt to stop terrorists targeting innocent Catholics, but claimed his handlers ignored some of the information he passed on to them.

At the loyalist’s trial, Brig Kerr testified he had saved many lives through his work.

No-one has ever been convicted of the Finucane murder. Charges were brought against Stobie, but the case later collapsed.

Weeks after he walked free former paramilitary associates assassinated him outside his north Belfast home in December 2001.

Mr Stevens is understood to have been frustrated by a wall of silence he encountered during his inquiries into the covert war against the IRA.

His team suffered a massive setback when their headquarters at Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, was burned down in a suspected arson attack that destroyed bundles of investigation files.

Although claims that military intelligence deliberately torched the offices could never be proven, Mr Stevens has privately rejected the theory that the blaze was an accident.

But the police chief has refused to abandon the case until he gets at the truth about what really went on during one of the most murky periods of Northern Ireland’s bloody conflict.