Police 'aided lawyer's murder'

Jun 19 00:16 UTC 2002

A BBC Panorama programme says elements within Northern Ireland's police and
military intelligence collaborated with loyalist paramilitaries in the late
1980s over the murder of Catholics. 

A man identified as a loyalist killer tells the programme - to be broadcast
on Wednesday - that the targets included the lawyer, Pat Finucane, who was
murdered 13 years ago. 

Mr Finucane was a thorn in the side of the British establishment in Northern
Ireland until the Sunday evening in 1989 when loyalist gunmen burst into his
home and shot him dead in front of his wife and children. 

As Panorama reveals, the story of who killed him and why continues to haunt
the authorities in Belfast and London. 

It also raises disturbing questions about collusion between elements of the
security forces and loyalist murder gangs. 

The central charge in the programme is that such collusion resulted in the
murder of a number of innocent Catholics - among them Mr Finucane. 

In one extraordinary moment, reporter John Ware sits in a car with Ken
Barrett, a loyalist paramilitary who is unaware that this meeting and others
are being secretly filmed and recorded. 

Barrett tells Ware bluntly: "Finucane would have been alive today if the
peelers (police) hadn't interfered." 

Barrett - described in the programme by a veteran detective as "a killer" -
says a special branch officer encouraged loyalists to murder Pat Finucane.


They then tipped off the assassination squad on the fatal night that the coast
around his house was clear - in other words that there were no police or Army
patrols around it. 

It is shocking stuff, but the programme suggests it is part of a pattern, and
that at the centre of that pattern were paramilitaries like Ken Barrett, but
also the still more sinister figure of Brian Nelson. 

'More professional' 

Nelson was a former soldier from Northern Ireland recruited by military
intelligence and sent back to Belfast to infiltrate the loyalist paramilitary
organisation the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). 

In partnership with his handlers though, his job rapidly and dangerously
expanded until he was supplying loyalist killers with intelligence documents
from the security forces. 
Duplicate office 

The obstruction he has faced was most dramatically illustrated by the fire
which destroyed the offices in which officers working for him were based, in
a police station near Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in 1990. 

There was a story the fire had been caused by a discarded cigarette end. 

But in the Panorama programme, Sir John says he never believed that story and
makes it plain he believes the shadowy forces he was investigating were out
to stop him. 

"What happened was, round about the second or third day of that inquiry, we
were given some notification that something might well happen. 

"That's the reason why we had a duplicate office in Cambridgeshire where we
had statements which made sure that when the fire took place we could continue
with the inquiry." 

The Stevens report is due out soon, but this Panorama report - with detectives
who worked on the inquiry helping to paint a picture of this murky world of
collusion and bereaved Catholic families telling of its human cost - seems
to point to the conclusions it will reach. 


In political terms, in Northern Ireland perhaps, it will not change
perceptions - not least because republicans have been alleging for years that
something like this was going on. 

But the revelations will cause shock elsewhere in the UK. 

Panorama has shed light on a murky and dangerous world, and will tell a
British audience one dark aspect of what was undertaken in their name in
Northern Ireland's recent past. 

The RUC became the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in November last
year.