New allegations of British state involvement in the murder of the Belfast solicitor, Mr Pat Finucane, and subsequent cover-up were levelled yesterday by a US-based human rights group.
The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights published its own report on the murder. It is entitled Beyond Collusion: The UK Security Forces and the Murder of Patrick Finucane.
In it the committee claims to have pieced together evidence of British state involvement in the Finucane case which has emerged since the killing on February 12th, 1989.
It further claims to have new information and is calling for a full, judicial inquiry into the murder. Their call is supported by a series of non-governmental organisations and political parties.
The Lawyers Committee says its new information centres on RUC interrogation notes which confirm that a police double agent prosecuted for the murder in 1999 made significant admissions about his involvement in the killing in 1990.
It also claims to have evidence that a former member of a covert British army unit knew that both the army and police understood Mr Finucane's life was under threat from the UDA but that he was not told.
It also claims that a recently-retired police officer has detailed the many threats he has received from officers in the RUC's intelligence division in response to his attempts to pursue the prosecution of a man who had confessed to being one of the two gunmen in the murder. The committee is pushing for a full inquiry as it believes that a proposal dealing with the matter which was concluded at the Weston Park negotiations last August on the future of the North's institutions is deficient.
The two governments and the North's political parties agreed last summer that an international judge should oversee the Finucane case and five other contentious killings.
The committee believes this measure would be ineffective as it would delay thorough investigation and allow more time to those who wish to hide information and degrade evidence.
It says that only a full judicial inquiry with appropriate powers could push the investigation forward and that official investigations into Mr Finucane's murder have not satisfied basic requirements of international law.
It adds that, under the European Convention on Human Rights, any inquiry must be carried out independent of the security forces implicated in the killing and that other standards of accountability and public scrutiny have not been met.
"In the 13 years since Finucane was gunned down in his home, the evidence of security-force involvement in the murder and subsequent cover-up has continued to swell," the committee says.
"Despite this, the record demonstrates a decided lack of political will to get at and make public the full truth about what happened. This failure to publicly uncover the truth undercuts the \government's commitment to fundamental principles of democratic accountability."