The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed to The Irish Timesthat it has requested the return of documents from the Stevens Inquiry into collusion between the former RUC and paramilitaries.
The ministry said it made the request in order to comply with requests for documents by newly-formed inquiries into a series of controversial killings in Northern Ireland in which police collusion with paramilitaries was alleged.
These include the murder of former loyalist leader Billy Wright in the Maze prison by the INLA in December 1997.
However, it was reported yesterday that some agencies had requested the return of documents to destroy them, prompting fears that vital evidence of collusion will be lost.
The Guardian newspaper quoted inquiry sources who said investigators had been asked for the return of documents and assurances that copies had not been made.
Hearings in the Billy Wright case are to open by the end of May while the inquiry into the murder of solicitor Rosemary Nelson is expected to hold oral hearings in September.
In a statement issued yesterday in London the MoD said: "The Ministry of Defence asked the Stevens team to return papers in 2005. This was so the MoD could fulfil its obligations and submit these papers to public inquiries. If the Stevens team believe that anyone in government has deliberately destroyed papers that would be relevant to a public inquiry, they must explain their reasons immediately, so that the allegation can be investigated."
The Wright inquiry heard late last year that hundreds of files relating to paramilitary prisoners at the Maze had already been destroyed. There are concerns inquiries into the murders of Wright and Nelson, as well as inquiries into the murders of Pat Finucane and Robert Hamill, will be hampered in their search for the truth because of the loss of vital evidence.
The former head of London's Metropolitan Police, Sir John - now Lord - Stevens, arrived in Northern Ireland to investigate police-paramilitary collusion in 1989 in the wake of the Finucane murder.
He has since completed three inquiries and reported that police officers had colluded with loyalists in murder, had withheld evidence or failed to share it and wilfully failed to keep proper records.
He said his three investigations had been "wilfully obstructed and misled".
"From day one, this obstruction was cultural in its nature and widespread within parts of the [British] army and RUC, the Force Research Unit, and RUC Special Branch in particular."
Only a handful of pages from his findings have been made public.
The British government promised to appoint an independent figure to investigate the four disputed murders with a view to holding inquiries following political talks at Weston Park in 2001.
Judge Peter Cory, a retired Canadian Supreme Court judge, subsequently called for independent inquiries in all four cases.
He has since backed the Finucane family in their criticism of the subsequent British government decision to pass fresh legislation in the case of the Finucane inquiry, enabling much of it to be held in private and the detailed findings to be withheld.
Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde, the former day-to-day head of the Stevens team in Northern Ireland before he joined the PSNI in 2002, was unavailable for comment last night about the allegation that vital inquiry evidence was requested in order for it to be destroyed.