FORMER CHIEF constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan is to appear before the Rosemary Nelson inquiry in Belfast next week.
He headed the RUC at the time of the murder of the Lurgan solicitor by loyalists, and later the newly formed Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Sir Ronnie, now head of the British police watchdog, is scheduled to answer questions for three days, beginning on Monday, about the RUC investigation into the murder.
The inquiry into Mrs Nelson’s murder has been hearing evidence for 97 days, with some anonymous witnesses giving testimony behind screens.
Hearings are being held in the same building as the Robert Hamill inquiry, which began taking evidence in public last week.
The inquiry panel had already heard from a series of medical professionals that Hamill, a 25-year-old father of three, died from serious brain injuries inflicted during an assault in Portadown, Co Armagh, in April 1997.
The inquiry is trying to establish if four RUC officers, in the vicinity at the time of the attack on Hamill, failed in any way to prevent it.
It is also investigating claims that another police officer acted to protect a suspect in the murder by advising on the destruction of evidence and by providing updates on progress in the investigation.
The inquiry heard from the North’s state pathologist this week that Hamill could have been fatally injured by relatively few severe blows to his head.
The length of the attack during which the fatal injuries were inflicted is key to the question of failure on the part of the RUC officers present to intervene.
Prof Jack Crane told counsel for the inquiry: “The more blows the more likely there will be an axonal injury but even a relatively small number of blows, if they were of sufficient force, could have caused severe traumatic diffuse axonal injury,” he said.
Prof Crane added that patients suffering from this type of injury normally had many more external injuries than Hamill had.
He recognised it was possible to have relatively few external injuries and severe internal ones.
Charles Adair QC, representing a number of police officers, put it to Prof Crane that there was no evidence Hamill had sustained any more than two or three blows to the head. “Yes, I think that’s right,” he replied.
Mr Adair asked if the fatal brain injury could have been inflicted in a period of seconds.
“Yes, it could,” Prof Crane said.
Neuropathologist Dr Brian Herron later told the inquiry that medical opinion was divided on the question of how much force was required to cause the type of brain injury that killed Hamill.
“It is my duty to this hearing to let you know this is controversial, and not everyone accepts these theories,” he said.
Members of the inquiry and some of the dead man’s family revisited the scene of the murder in Portadown on Thursday evening. A police vehicle was positioned where one had been stationed on the night of the killing, in order to give a view similar to that which police would have had on the night of the killing.
The inquiry continues next Tuesday.