Serious allegations of official collusion in the murder of Mr Patrick Finucane, the Belfast solicitor who was shot 14 times in his home in front of his wife and two children on February 12th, 1989, were presented here to US Congressmen.
Mr Param Cumaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, detailed the allegations in a crowded House of Representatives hearing room on Tuesday.
"The Ulster Freedom Fighters, a Protestant paramilitary organisation, immediately claimed responsibility for the murder, but to date no one has ever been charged for the crime," the UN official told a human rights sub-committee of the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives.
Mr Cumaraswamy recalled that less than four weeks before the murder Mr Douglas Hogg, then British Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, stated: "There are in Northern Ireland a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA."
Mr Cumaraswamy commented: "Since Patrick Finucane's murder further information that seriously calls into question that there was official collusion has come to light following the arrest and conviction of Brian Nelson for conspiracy to murder in January 1990.
"According to the evidence that was presented at his trial, Nelson, who served as a chief intelligence officer for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), had been recruited by military intelligence to provide information on paramilitary activity, including planned assassinations, which the army would then pass on to the RUC. Nelson did in fact later participate in the planning of assassinations that were actually carried out, which was the basis for his conviction.
"A BBC Panorama documentary that was broadcast on June 8th, 1992, revealed that Nelson had kept a prison diary in which he wrote that he had informed his handlers in the military that Patrick Finucane was being targeted by loyalist paramilitaries as early as December 1988. The diary also stated that Nelson had provided a photograph of Finucane to a paramilitary assassin a few days before the murder."
The information contained in the diary was essentially corroborated by a witness at Nelson's trial, the rapporteur said. This witness, referred to only as "Colonel J" to protect his identity, was a senior ranking military intelligence officer.
"According to his testimony, Nelson had provided him with UDA material on a weekly basis . . . More seriously, Col J testified that the RUC had been informed about the information passed on by Nelson to military intelligence, including the planned assassinations. In this regard, Col J noted that planned assassinations had been foiled, including an attempt on the life of Gerry Adams. "The RUC, however, has denied that any information obtained by Nelson concerning the planned assassination of Patrick Finucane had been passed on to the police . . . "Following the Panorama broadcast, the then RUC Chief Constable, Hugh Annesley, requested John Stevens, who had conducted an earlier inquiry into charges of collusion which led to the arrest and conviction of Brian Nelson, to investigate the allegations. Stevens issued his final report in January 1995. The report and conclusions have not been made public."