The Finucane family has pledged to continue campaigning for a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, despite failing in a judicial review seeking to compel the British prime minister to hold such an investigation.
Lord Justice Stephens at Belfast High Court upheld the right of David Cameron to refuse a full-scale public inquiry into the 1989 UDA killing of the Belfast solicitor, notwithstanding that such a commitment was given under the British Labour government following the 2001 Weston Park peace process talks in England.
He dismissed the application except in relation to a “continuing procedural obligation on the state to investigate the murder”. Rather than an inquiry, Mr Cameron commissioned a review of the murder case by British lawyer Sir Desmond de Silva QC.
De Silva report
In his 500-page report, Mr de Silva said there was a significant doubt as to whether Mr Finucane would have been murdered in front of his family at their north Belfast home had it not been for the different strands of involvement by elements of the British state.
He found that a series of positive actions by employees of the British state “actively furthered and facilitated his murder” and there was a relentless effort to defeat the ends of justice in the aftermath of his killing.
“My review of the evidence relating to Patrick Finucane’s case has left me in no doubt that agents of the State were involved in carrying out serious violations of human rights up to and including murder,” he reported.
This, however, failed to satisfy the Finucane family, with the solicitor’s widow Geraldine describing the report as a “sham” and a “whitewash”.
Direct evidence
In his judgment, which took two hours and five minutes to read, Lord Justice Stephens rejected the “sham” claim and that there was “no direct evidence of a closed mind” on the part of the UK government.
He referred to how inquiries into the killings of Billy Wright, Rosemary Nelson and Robert Hamill and into Bloody Sunday cost £304 million. He found that a full independent inquiry would be costly, protracted and could not be confined to narrow issues surrounding the murder.
The judge also found that the British government had not met its obligations to conduct a prompt investigation of new evidence into Mr Finucane’s murder uncovered by the de Silva report. He invited lawyers for the Finucane family and the British government back to court on Tuesday to further discuss this element of his ruling.
The judicial review was taken by Geraldine Finucane, who did not attend the reading of the judgment. Solicitor John Finucane, a son of Mr Finucane, attended the hearing with his sister Katherine and his two uncles Seamus and Martin.
John Finucane said the family would press ahead with their campaign. He said politically there should be a public inquiry while legally they would attend Tuesday’s hearing and consider what to do next. This could involve appealing yesterday’s ruling, he said.
“We have been on a campaign for 26 years. We have had numerous setbacks, numerous successes along that way. We see today not as a setback which would end our campaign once and for all,” he said outside the court.
