Finucane delay raises concerns

The Government will continue to press for a judicial inquiry into the murder of Mr Pat Finucane despite the British government…

The Government will continue to press for a judicial inquiry into the murder of Mr Pat Finucane despite the British government's decision to delay implementing a recommendation to do so by Judge Peter Cory. Dan Keenan and Joe Humphreys report

The decision to hold off on an inquiry, pending prosecutions and ongoing investigations, has put the two governments at odds and angered relatives, nationalist politicians and human rights groups.

The controversy could upset relations between the Northern parties at a time when the governments want to push for agreement on the restoration of Stormont. Remarks by Mr David Trimble in the House of Commons about Mr Pat Finucane have been seen as inflammatory by his widow and by the SDLP.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, and the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, spoke about the British decision on Wednesday night just hours before the inquiry decisions were announced in London.

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The four Cory reports criticised a range of British government and security agencies, including the RUC Special Branch; the British army and the undercover Force Research Unit (FRU); the Northern Ireland Office; and the prison authorities.

All but a few paragraphs from the Hamill, Nelson and Wright reports were published in full, but at least nine pages of the Finucane report were censored by the British government.

Some of the judge's most damning comments related to the Special Branch and the FRU, both of which were said to have allowed loyalist attacks, and to have obstructed the Stevens investigation into the Finucane murder.

The judge listed a series of failures in relation to the Nelson case and questioned the actions of some RUC officers present when Mr Hamill was kicked to death by a loyalist mob in Portadown in 1997.

On the murder of Billy Wright in the Maze Prison in December 1997, the judge said the decision to transfer the loyalist paramilitary leader to a block shared by INLA members would be considered, in most jurisdictions, "to be at least negligent" if not wilfully negligent.

Spokesmen for both Mr Cowen and Mr Murphy denied last night that the two were badly at odds. However, the Government fears London will cite ongoing investigations and prosecutions to prevent a Finucane inquiry for the foreseeable future.

A reliable Dublin source said: "We are not at loggerheads, we just disagree about this. We fear [an inquiry] has been long-fingered indefinitely." The British government had hoped for the contentious inquiries issue to be dealt with quickly along with the expected report into paramilitary activity by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC).

However, The Irish Times was told last night this has now been delayed until Monday, April 19th. The IMC was simply "not ready", said a British government spokesman. A London source denied that differences with Dublin over the Finucane decision would poison the political atmosphere at a delicate time as the two governments prepared to push for a settlement by their declared June deadline.

"Of course this will rock the boat. The IMC report will rock the boat, but the same people will sit down to address the same old problem. We'll just have to get on with it."

The British government does not share Irish concerns about open-ended delays to a Finucane inquiry.

Judge Cory acknowledged in his report into the Finucane case that prosecutions could delay a public inquiry for two years. In a significant passage he said: "This may be one of the rare situations where a public inquiry will be of greater benefit to a community than prosecutions."

However, he added: "In light of my finding that there is sufficient evidence of collusion to warrant a public inquiry, the community might prefer a public inquiry over a prosecution, even if it means that some witnesses must receive exemption from prosecution. The difficult decision to be made by the attorney general will require a careful and sensitive balancing of all the relevant factors."

Mrs Geraldine Finucane denounced remarks by Mr Trimble yesterday in which he connected her late husband and Co Armagh solicitor, Mrs Rosemary Nelson, with paramilitaries. Mr Trimble suggested that Mr Finucane and Mrs Nelson had "a clear terrorist connection". She said: "His accusations were designed to signal to a small section of the public that my husband's murder was justified, but David Trimble thinks that the public are naïve and they will believe his unfounded, unproven and cowardly accusations."