Relatives of the murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane said they fear the British government is seeking to "delay and frustrate" the establishment of a judicial inquiry into the case.
They believed there will be a "drip-feeding" of further prosecutions to prevent the inquiry the government agreed to establish.
The family referred to letters from the British Prime Minister and the Northern Secretary to British-Irish Rights Watch and to Mrs Geraldine Finucane which insist that prosecutions must be completed before the promised judicial inquiry can be established.
Ken Barrett, who is charged with murdering Mr Finucane in 1989, is due before the Crown Court on Monday morning.
One letter to Ms Jane Winter, director of British-Irish Rights Watch, from Mr Tony Blair's private secretary and seen by The Irish Times, refers to the Barrett case. Significantly, the letter stated: "It is possible that further prosecutions may follow which could also be put at risk by a parallel inquiry."
The Finucane family is convinced that further prosecutions, some of them relatively minor, will be brought to court, thus delaying indefinitely the inquiry which they said is essential to uncover the truth about the killing.
Mr Finucane's son, Michael, alleged last night: "This strategy involves, among other things, the drip-feeding of prosecutions into the criminal justice system so that the establishment of a public inquiry is frustrated and delayed."
Mr Justice Peter Cory, the retired Canadian Supreme Court judge who investigated the Finucane case and five others in which paramilitary collusion is alleged, told the British government last October that he felt there should be a judicial inquiry into the murder.
Aware of the pending proceedings against Barrett, a leading Shankill loyalist, he said the case was a rare example of the need to dispense with a prosecution in order to allow a wider judicial inquiry to proceed.
In a letter which Mrs Finucane received this week, Mr Paul Murphy signalled that all legal proceedings would have to be concluded before any inquiry.
His letter stated: "The Attorney General, in his independent capacity as guardian of the public interest in the administration of justice, has taken the view that if an inquiry were to be commenced before the conclusion of those proceedings [against Barrett] there is a significant risk that it would no longer be possible to continue with the prosecution."
Mr Murphy continued: "It is necessary for me to take account of this risk when weighing the public interest which demands that prosecutions should be pursued to their conclusion and wrongdoers punished."
However, Mr Finucane said this reply tried to "fob off" his family."We will not be fobbed off, nor will we sit idle while the British government tries to evade its responsibilities to us and the other families of those murdered," he said.