Dublin South West Sinn Féin TD, Séan Crowe, has said documents revealed in a Belfast court yesterday clearly point to a web of cover-up within the British Government, and their intelligence services, in relation to the murder of solicitor and human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.
Crowe, who is also a member of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, made his comments after a decision by a judge in the case decided to order the British government to produce before the court actual minutes of Cabinet meetings, and correspondence between MI5 and the Northern Ireland Office regarding their decision to refuse a public inquiry into the Finucane killing.
Deputy Seán Crowe said:
“Patrick Finucane, a prominent human rights lawyer, was shot dead in front of his wife and young children as they sat down to Sunday dinner on 12 February 1989.
“Since that day conclusive evidence continues to surface, which shows that both the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary had highly placed agents in the loyalist paramilitary group that carried out the murder.
“Human rights NGOs, and others who have investigated the killing, believe the only reasonable conclusion to the case is that very senior British officials must have had foreknowledge that this murder was to take place.
“John Stevens, former Assistant Chief Constable of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, conducted a number of inquiries into collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the RUC and British Army.
“He found that British security elements supplied weapons, intelligence, training, directions, transport and made areas sterile to allow killings to be carried out.
“Yet the full and extensive evidence Stevens gathered on the Finucane murder, and other cases, still remains a secret.
“However the correspondence revealed in court yesterday points to a web of cover-up within the British government from the time of Pat Finucane’s killing.
“David Cameron’s intelligence advisor said that evidence available internally to the British government would, and I quote …‘suggest that within Government at a high level this systematic problem with loyalist agents was known, but nothing was done about it.’
“This is the real reason why the British government are against a full public inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane.
“If David Cameron is to break with what his predecessors have done in Ireland, and aid peace and reconciliation, then he needs to honour the commitment given at Weston Park and hold a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder.
“These documents point to why the secrecy needs to end and the Finucane family be given access to the truth. The British Government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry is a disgrace and is compounding the hurt felt by the Finucane family.”
ENDS