A senior UN official has said there "seems to be truth" to allegations by defence lawyers in the North that they have been subjected to harassment and intimidation by the RUC. Mr Dato Param Cumaraswamy, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, has just completed a 10-day visit to Britain and the North to investigate the complaints and to look into the killing of Belfast solicitor Mr Pat Finucane.
The solicitors claim police officers make the threats through their clients while in RUC interrogation centres. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Mr Cumaraswamy said: "There seems to be truth to these allegations." He accused the RUC of not treating the situation seriously.
He called for an independent judicial inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder by loyalists eight years ago. Suspicion of security force involvement had "not been allayed to date", he said. There were serious doubts as to whether the state knew the lawyer was a target and did not fulfil its obligation to protect him, he added.
Mr Cumaraswamy stressed that these were his "immediate preliminary observations" and that his final report would be submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights in the New Year.
During his visit, Mr Cumaraswamy met a wide range of people involved in the administration of justice, including the RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan; the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Carswell; the Law Society; the Bar Council; solicitors and prison officials.
Only 20 of the North's 1,400 solicitors act for the defence in politically-sensitive cases. Mr Cumaraswamy said that they did so "very courageously".
Some who had allegedly received threats accepted them as "a professional hazard" and had "learned to live" with the situation, he said. They had not complained to the RUC because they had no faith in the force's mechanism for investigating complaints. Neither had they voiced their concerns to the Law Society because they had also lost faith in that body, he said.
The RUC insisted that as it had not received the complaints it had no opportunity to investigate them, he said. However, the lawyers had previously spoken to international human rights organisations which had submitted reports to the police. The RUC therefore had documents and should have realised that a "serious problem" existed, he said.
He criticised the Law Society for not discharging "its role as a professional organisation to protect this small group of lawyers".
Mr Cumaraswamy believed the situation would improve mainly because the British government was planning to introduce audiorecording of all police interrogations in the North.