Finucane family’s anger warranted
THE seething anger evident in the countenance of Geraldine Finucane after the Secretary of State said there would be no public inquiry into the murder of her lawyer husband, Pat, said all that was needed about how the family regarded this latest denial of the justice they seek.
It was on a Sunday evening on February 12, 1989 when loyalist gunmen burst into the Finucane family home in north Belfast and shot him 14 times. His wife was injured by a ricocheting bullet.
What emerged during the next 31 years made this one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles. Three weeks before the murder Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg said some solicitors in Northern Ireland were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”. The Finucane family has campaigned ceaselessly to find out the exact circumstances that led to Mr Finucane’s murder.
A number of police inquiries and two judge led inquiries have been held and in the most recent court hearing the highest court in the UK confirmed that no effective police investigation had been held into the lawyer’s death. It stopped short of ordering a public inquiry but that comment alone fuelled further demands for one. The family was backed by the Irish Government as well as four Northern Ireland political parties.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron apologised to the family and admitted there were “shocking levels of collusion” between the State, police officers and soldiers and the UDA members who killed Finucane. The inquiry headed by judge Sir Desmond de Silva, although rejected by the family, laid bare the level of that collusion and also that on the balance of probability a RUC officer or more than one police officer had proposed Mr Finucane as a target to loyalist paramilitaries.
It is understandable that the family wants a public inquiry which unlike previous inquiries could compel witnesses to attend and that they feel the Secretary of State’s statement that he doesn’t rule out such an inquiry for all time but that it should wait until current inquiries by the PSNI and the Police Ombudsman take place is merely a stalling tactic.
The family is convinced that collusion went even deeper than currently exposed but the reality of the situation is that after 31 years the chances of any new evidence emerging is remote. The Chief Constable Simon Byrne admits there are no new leads in the case and wonders what purpose another review would serve. Decisions like yesterday’s by the Secretary of State inevitably provoke a ‘what have they got to hide’ reaction?