Finucane fight for independent inquiry
The son of murdered North Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane last week told a US congressional hearing that his family will accept nothing less than a full, public and independent inquiry into his father’s death.
Speaking in front of the American government’s sub-committee on international organisations, human rights and oversight John Finucane said his family would never accept any kind of “charade” brought under the British government’s restrictive 2005 Inquiries Act.
A public inquiry into Pat Finucans’s murder was recommended initially by Peter Cory, former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada who was tasked by the British and Irish governments to look at controversial killings.
In 2003 he recommended a public inquiry into the North Belfast solicitor’s death should be held but quickly afterwards, the British government announced that a new law was required.
In 2004 the then British Secretary of State for the North Paul Murphy told the Finucane family the inquiry would come under the Inquiries Act because “much of the material that would have to be examined in this inquiry is highly sensitive to national security issues. For example many of the operational techniques that would be discussed in the inquiry would be used currently in the war against terror.”
Those techniques were confirmed as collusion by former Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Lord John Stevens.
“The Inquiries Act 2005 prevents any inquiry from acting independently,” John Finucane said.
“It forces the tribunal, no matter how independent, credible or reputable its Chairpersons, to comply with decisions made by government ministers. My family is against holding an inquiry into my father’s murder under the Inquiries Act because we will not participate in a charade.
“We want what we asked for and what was agreed between the British and Irish governments in 2001 – an independent, public, judicial inquiry, composed of international judges that are in no way associated with Britain or the British government.
“This is important, not just to my family, but society as a whole, in Ireland and internationally, because it would instil confidence in the inquiry, its work and its conclusions.
“A whitewash would do more harm than good.
“The circumstances surrounding the murder of Patrick Finucane are about much more than the killing of one man.
“They represent simply the best-known case of what could have happened to anyone and what did happen to many.
“The thing I want most of all is to know the truth about my father’s murder. If the British government is serious about resolving the situation in Northern Ireland for good and building a lasting peace, then all we ask is this one simple thing. They cannot give me back my father; the least they can do is tell me the truth.”
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