We have detected that the browser you are using is no longer supported. As a result, some content may not display correctly.
We suggest that you upgrade to the latest version of any of the following browsers:
close notification
A br
anch of British army intelligence and some police officers in
Northern Ireland actively helped a Protestant paramilitary group to
murder Catholics in the late 1980s, a report by Britain's top
police chief Thursday said.
The report by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens
centred on the murder of high-profile Catholic lawyer Pat Finucane
in 1989 by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Northern Ireland's
main Protestant paramilitary group.
It also examined the killing of Protestant student Brian Adam
Lambert, shot by Protestant paramilitaries in November 1987 after
they apparently mistook him for being a Catholic.
"I have uncovered enough evidence to lead me to believe that the
murders of Pat Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert could have been
prevented," Stevens told a Belfast press conference.
"I conclude there was collusion in both murders and the
circumstances surrounding them," Stevens said, adding that
collusion ranged "from the wilful failure to keep records, the
absence of accountablity, the witholding of intelligence and
evidence, through to the extreme of agents being involved in
murder." He added: "The unlawful involvement of agents in murder
implies the security forces sanction killings." Stevens said the
Northern Ireland police force's investigation into Finucane's
murder should have resulted in the early detection and arrest of
his killers.
His report made 21 recommendations in a bid to safeguard future
intelligence operations, including a call for the police service of
Northern Ireland to carry out a full review of all procedures for
investigating terrorist offences.
The Stevens report, described as the biggest criminal inquiry in
British history, also found that military intelligence in Northern
Ireland actually prolonged the conflcit.
The report suggests one branch of military intelligence was out of
control and its activities were disastrous.
Finucane was shot dead at his Belfast home in February 1989 by a
gunman belonging to the UDA who was also working as a Special
Branch police 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.
Stevens' report, which followed a four-year inquiry, had been
widely leaked ahead of its publication Thursday.
Finucane's son called it "an embodiment of broken promises and
dishonoured commitments." "The policy in Northern Ireland was --
and may yet be -- to harness the killing potential of loyalist
(Protestant) 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," he said.
"Simple policy. Simple operation. Simply chilling," he added.
Finucane's widow Geraldine told BBC television there should be a
full public judicial inquiry "where this is brought out into the
open, where everybody can lay their ghosts to rest and then society
can move forward." - Sapa-AFP
Map
