Up to 100 witnesses will testify during a public inquiry into the mob killing of Catholic man Robert Hamill.
Mr Hamill (25) was beaten to death by loyalists yards from a police patrol in Northern Ireland eight years ago as he walked home from a night out in Portadown, Co Armagh. He died in hospital 11 days later, having never regained consciousness.
Retired High Court Judge Sir Edwin Jowitt will chair a three-member panel seeking to establish if RUC officers knowingly ignored the attack on Mr Hamill, a father-of-three.
Six men were accused of the murder of Mr Hamill. Charges were dropped against five, while was acquitted of murder and sentenced to four years for affray. A decision was taken not to prosecute any of the police officers on duty that night.
But after Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, began examining the case four years ago a number of arrests were made, including that of an RUC officer.
But charges of perverting the course of justice brought against three people, one an ex-police reservist, were later dropped when a key witness failed to testify.
Inquiry sources said they expected up to 100 witnesses to provide statements when the main part of the hearing begins next spring.
The Government agreed to set up an inquiry into the April 1997 killing after the case was examined by former Canadian Judge Peter Cory. It was one of four murders in Northern Ireland for which he found enough evidence of collusion to warrant a public tribunal.
The other three are in relation to the car bomb attack on solicitor Rosemary Nelson, the prison assassination of loyalist paramilitary leader Billy Wright and the shooting of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane.
PA