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Showing posts with label Pat Finucane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pat Finucane. Show all posts
Village ✒ the 32-year cover-up of the Finucane assassination, its link to Kincora and the hypocrisy of the former prime minister. 

Joseph de Burca.

This week marks the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane. In 1989 he was shot dead by UDA killers controlled by MI5 in front of his young family at his home. The British government continues to resist a judicial inquiry into the murder despite castigation from its own Supreme Court and human rights groups across the globe.

No-one in the Tory party is putting Boris Johnson under any pressure to resolve the matter.

Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, however, has accused him of abandoning Britain’s “position of global moral leadership”. Johnson, she said, has failed to honour British values by threatening to break international law during Brexit trade negotiations. Another criticism was that he had backed away from Britain’s foreign aid targets. These two developments had not “raised our credibility in the eyes of the world”, she argued.

She then proceeded to lecture him to live up to “our values”.

Continue reading @ Village.

Let Theresa May, Who Has Not Sinned, Cast the First Stone

Harry Hutchinson ✒ On the 12th of February 1989, Ken Barrett, a leading figure in the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA), along with an accomplice, smashed into the North Belfast home of criminal defence lawyer, Pat Finucane, and shot him fourteen times in front of his wife and children.


An RUC road check was set up to assist the gunmen in their escape from the murder scene, after Police Special Branch and the British MI5 service were informed of the pending attack.

Pat Finucane was a successful human rights lawyer who represented mostly Republicans, including IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, but he had also represented Loyalists. He became a well-known figure in Northern Ireland and the British state were intent on silencing him.

Public Inquiry demanded

The Tory Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis, this week ruled out a public inquiry into the Finucane killing, claiming “other review processes would have to run their course.” This is the latest attempt by the British to prevent any proper inquiry into the Finucane murder, a murder that highlights Britain’s involvement into state collusion with paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland. Despite promises to the Irish Government that they would institute a public inquiry into his killing, the British have again reneged on that.

Findings from as far back as 1999 in the Stevens Report by the former, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, uncovered evidence of state collusion in the Finucane murder. In addition, in 2000, further evidence in the Finucane killing, uncovered by Canadian Judge Peter Cory, “disappeared.” In 2012, an inquiry by Sir Desmond de Silva uncovered extensive collusion between state collaborators and Loyalists and the admission was admitted in parliament by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who also issued an apology for it.

Paid informer confessed to killing

Pat Finucane’s killer was Ken Barrett, a paid informer of Special Branch, who confessed to Finucane’s murder to the RUC. However, the tape of his confession “went missing", only to resurface again after a Panorama documentary in which Barrett again confessed his involvement in the murder. Barrett was handed a 22-year sentence in 2003, but was released in 2006. Brian Nelson, a member of Force Research Unit, a covert military unit of the British Army, claimed that he alerted his handlers of the planned Finucane killing. William Stobie, a quartermaster in the UDA, was arrested for supplying the weapons that were used in the murder, after evidence emerged from the Stevens inquiry. However, Stobie’s trial collapsed after he claimed he had informed Special Branch of the planned attack.

Solid evidence of state collusion

Despite the European Convention on Human rights reporting “solid evidence” of state collusion with paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the British Government blocks all attempts to carry out a proper public inquiry into the involvement of the state with paramilitaries throughout all the years of the troubles in the North.

Bodies like the Historical Inquiries Team, set up to look into over three thousand unsolved murders, have been stalled due to budget cuts. Britain's involvement in collusion with both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries stretches back to the 1970s. There was involvement, both in what they knew and what they directly instigated in terms of murders and bombings throughout the duration of the troubles. This is what they want kept hidden from the public, because were their true role revealed, it might emerge that British state forces prolonged the duration of the ‘Troubles’ that left a deep scar on Northern Irish society and caused more than three thousand deaths. 

➽ Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

British Government Cover-Up Over Killings

Belfast Telegraph ✒ De Silva report revealed reality of state collusion with loyalists.

Malachi O'Doherty

Pat Finucane was offered to the UDA as an alternative to their first choice of target. They were more keen to kill Gerry Adams, but the security services directed them away from him, with someone pointing out Finucane as a higher-value target.

This is not a shock expose I am offering; it is information available from the de Silva report into the killing of Pat Finucane.

One of the unfortunate side-effects of the continuing deadlock over the demand for a public inquiry into Finucane's murder is that what has already come to light is undervalued.

David Cameron, as Prime Minister, in refusing a public inquiry, went some way to clarifying the horror of what had happened by inviting Sir Desmond de Silva QC to examine intelligence on the killing and to report on its contents.

What de Silva delivered is a shocking account of the collusion with paramilitaries by both the Army and RUC Special Branch (SB).

Geraldine Finucane, who was herself wounded in the attack that killed her husband, described the report as a whitewash.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Why Was Pat Finucane Sacrificed And Gerry Adams Allowed To Survive?

Irish Times ✒ Any day now, Boris Johnson will say with bogus bonhomie: ‘Let’s get legacy done.’

Susan McKay

Geraldine Finucane has the face of a woman used to suffering deeply private pain in public. It is clear that immense strength must be needed to maintain that composure.

For 30 years she has had to stand in the glare of cameras in front of lawyers’ offices, court rooms, parliament, 10 Downing Street, and elsewhere, describing the latest way in which successive British governments have thwarted her in her quest for the truth to be revealed about the murder of her husband, Pat, in 1989. But last week she appeared hardly able to contain her anger and distress.

No wonder. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, had just announced that the UK government would not order an independent inquiry into the murder. He did so almost two years after the UK Supreme Court unanimously found that the state had failed to date to meet the standards required under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

If The British Government Has Its Way, No One Is Getting Truth Or Justice

The Guardian ✒ Boris Johnson is dodging a public inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane by loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

John Finucane

On 12 February 1989, my father, the human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries as we sat together at the dinner table in the kitchen of our home in Belfast. I was eight years old. I sat with my mother, my sister and brother and suddenly ended up squeezed into a corner, as the gunmen fired shot after shot into the prone figure of my father. He was 39 years old when he died.

For 31 years, my family have campaigned to uncover the truth behind the murder. We seek to achieve, in death, the justice that my father fought for on behalf of many other people throughout his working life. We have struggled to achieve that justice in the face of extraordinary adversity, as we have been confronted with resistance from the British government and powerful vested interests within the British state.

Despite the efforts of successive British governments to cover up the truth, a great deal is known about the extent of state collusion in the murder of Pat Finucane and others.  

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

The British Government Is Still Hiding The Truth About My Father's Murder

The Guardian ✒ UK has not carried out effective inquiries into killings as required by ECHR, Council of Europe says.

Owen Bowcott 

The Council of Europe has issued a stinging rebuke to the UK over its failure to enforce judgments by the European court of human rights (ECHR) involving security force killings and suspected collusion cases in Northern Ireland.

In a resolution published on Thursday, the Council of Europe, which oversees the ECHR, expressed “profound concern” at the government’s failure to effectively investigate legacy cases from the Troubles, including the 1989 murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

The committee of ministers made a formal request for the UK to provide further information on several cases by 25 January. It comes only days after the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, refused to hold a public inquiry into Finucane’s death.

The solicitor was shot dead by loyalist gunmen in front of his wife and three children. It later emerged that Brian Nelson, who directed the attacks, was an agent controlled by the British army’s force research unit.

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

UK Rebuked Over Failure To Enforce Troubles Court Rulings

In a letter to the Irish News this week Martin Galvin responded to:

Trevor Ringland - Polarized politicians still pressing hate button when it comes to elections - November 19th


A chara,

After Pat Finucane's murder, I flew to Washington to get a letter from Congressmen protesting crown force complicity in his assassination. The British Ambassador quickly contacted some of these Congressmen insisting "her majesty's government would never sully its hands conspiring with murderers", and calling me a "scurrilous liar." The only question, given the known extent of collusion, was whether this British official was deliberately misleading Congressmen or been himself misled by superiors.

Trevor Ringland's letter raises similar questions. Can he be oblivious to Britain's malign role in events like the murder of Pat Finucane? His letters follow a pattern. Mr. Ringland laments some event, like the hate filled banners aimed at Pat Finucane's son John for standing in north Belfast. He then faults Republicans and unionists, for whatever wrongs he piously laments.

Mr. Ringland blames everyone but Britain, solemnly adding that violence "outside the law" is never justified. He seems to imply that murders or collusion killings by British crown forces were "within British law" and always justified.

His difficulty is that the facts and reality belie his fairy tale version of noble British rule. Does Mr. Ringland not understand why a banner bearing Pat Finucane's likeness would remind nationalists about violence "inside British law," where the role of British Army officers and RUC constabulary would be shielded?

How can he ignore the da Silva revelations, Cameron's apology for shocking state collusion or the family's heroic fight for a public inquiry and real truth?

Is Mr. Ringland unaware British Minister Douglas Hogg targeted the civil rights lawyer in Westminster, when complaining about "solicitors unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA?" British military intelligence agent Brian Nelson, passed on Pat's photograph, pointed out the Finucane home and abetted the killer gang. Almost all members of the death squad were paid British crown agents. An RUC checkpoint was pulled. Members of the RUC threatened Pat, asking loyalists why he was still alive.

Today's banner merely revives old slurs created by British forces to justify Pat's elimination.

It is time to ask, as he self-righteously ignores Britain's hand in the murder and banner, has Mr. Ringland been completely misled about these facts, or is he wilfully attempting to mislead others?


Slan,

Martin Galvin

Martin Galvin is a US Attorney-At-Law.

Ringland Ignores Facts Of Finucane Banner

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