A judge investigating six controversial sectarian murders on either side of the Border has completed half his work, it emerged today.
Mr Peter Cory was appointed by the Irish and British governments to examine claims of security force collusion in each of the killings, including those of solicitors Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson.
The former Canadian supreme court judge has now finished investigating another two of the cases: those of loyalist paramilitary boss Billy Wright and Catholic man Robert Hamill.
Work on the latest stage of his inquiry has been finalised as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens prepares to release a major new report into the 1989 Finucane murder.
Mr Justice Cory has already studied allegations that British military intelligence and RUC Special Branch officers helped Ulster Defence Association gunmen plot the lawyer's assassination.
The British government is committed to instigating a public inquiry into any of the deaths if the judge recommends it in his final report expected in the autumn.
But Mr Justice Cory has now informed Northern Secretary Mr Paul Murphy that work on the Hamill and Wright murders has been completed.
Wright, commander of the splinter Loyalist Volunteer Force, was shot dead by republican prisoners inside the Maze Jail near Lisburn, Co Antrim, two days after Christmas 1997.
The judge has also studied files on the brutal murder of Robert Hamill, a 25-year-old Catholic beaten to death by a loyalist mob in the centre of Portadown, Co Armagh, in May 1997.
It has been claimed police in a Land Rover parked just yards from the attack failed to intervene.
PA