Rosemary Nelson murder hearings

FULL HEARINGS into the 1999 murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson will open in Belfast tomorrow.

FULL HEARINGS into the 1999 murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson will open in Belfast tomorrow.

The inquiry, which could take two years or more, was prompted by allegations that elements of the British security forces colluded with Ms Nelson's loyalist killers.

The inquiry team is charged with establishing whether the RUC, British army, Northern Ireland Office or other British state agencies such as MI5 "facilitated" her death or obstructed the investigation of her murder.

The 40-year-old solicitor died after a bomb exploded under her car in Lurgan. Ms Nelson was a high-profile lawyer who came to public prominence when she represented Garvaghy Road residents during the Drumcree stand-offs in the mid-to late-1990s.

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Ms Nelson complained that she was subjected to RUC harassment and that police told some of her clients that she would be murdered.

In 1998 then United Nations investigator Param Cumaraswamy complained about the alleged harassment of the solicitor to the UN in Geneva and to the British government.

The inquiry members are its chairman, Sir Michael Morland, a retired high court judge of England and Wales; Dame Valerie Strachan, former chairwoman of the British customs and excise board, and Sir Anthony Burden, former chief constable of South Wales Police.

Gerry Moriarty

Gerry Moriarty

Gerry Moriarty is the former Northern editor of The Irish Times