Decision not to hold public inquiry wrong, insists ex-police ombudsman
FORMER police ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’loan has said the UK Government made the wrong decision when it refused to carry out a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane.
Baroness O’loan said she wasn’t surprised by Monday’s announcement by Secretary of State Brandon Lewis.
The Belfast solicitor’s widow Geraldine described it as “yet another insult added to a deep and lasting injury”.
Mr Finucane was shot dead by loyalists in 1989 in collusion with elements of the state security forces.
Speaking to RTE yesterday, Baroness O’loan said: “I think that where you have proved state collusion, as we do in this case, there remain unanswered questions and the public interest requires that we seek as best we can to get the answers to those questions.”
She said there have been suggestions that this is one of many murders in which an aspect of them remains unresolved, but said “it’s one in which the rule of law, which is the basis of the whole operation of our society, was set aside by agents of the state”.
“When that happens it attacks the whole integrity of the British state and our way of doing things.
“The question remains how high did it go. That’s what Pat Finucane’s family want to know,” she said.
A PSNI review would not add anything new, she believes.
“What needs to be done is an inquiry, with the powers that even an investigation doesn’t have, to get into the security services.”
Yesterday, the Irish Government expressed “profound regret” at the decision.
It said in a statement: “In a case such as this, in which it is acknowledged that there were — in the words of Prime Minister Cameron — ‘shocking levels of collusion’, there is an undeniable onus on the state to do everything possible to restore public confidence through a process that fully meets relevant international standards and obligations of effectiveness, independence and transparency.”