British intelligence officers, police chiefs and top civil servants will be questioned at a public inquiry into the murder of solicitor Rosemary Nelson set to open in Belfast.
The public inquiry follows a 2004 report on her case by Canadian judge Peter Cory
Nine years after the 40-year-old was killed in a loyalist car bomb attack, the inquiry will begin its public hearings on Tuesday to determine if the authorities had a role in her murder.
Today a former United Nations official who had warned of the dangers facing the mother-of-three before her death, described her as a fearless solicitor who took on controversial cases others were afraid to touch.
Former UN investigator Param Cumaraswamy said: “I welcome the inquiry. The perpetrators of that tragic brutal murder of Rosemary Nelson on March 15th, 1999 must be identified and brought to justice.
“I trust that the process of this inquiry will leave no stones unturned to seek the truth.”
The Public Inquiry opens on Tuesday and will be led by Sir Michael Morland, a retired Judge of the High Court of England and Wales.
It can investigate the conduct of MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the British army and the Northern Ireland Office.
But early estimates suggest its work could take at least two years as it attempts to unravel a case with a long and troubled history.
In 1998 Param Cumaraswamy complained to the UN in Geneva and to the British government having met Mrs Nelson and heard her claims of RUC harassment.
Mrs Nelson made the same allegations at a special hearing in the United States congress in Washington and there were fears her case resembled that of solicitor Pat Finucane, shot dead by loyalists 10 years earlier in 1989.
Both lawyers represented republican suspects and both said they later faced threats from the security forces and from loyalist paramilitaries.
Ms Nelson ran her own small legal practice in Lurgan, Co Armagh, a town divided along sectarian lines and based near Portadown, home of the Drumcree parades flashpoint.
Most of her work involved routine legal business, but she also accepted a number of controversial cases which put her under the spotlight.
Ms Nelson represented leading republican Colin Duffy and overturned his conviction for murdering a soldier after it emerged a crucial police witness was a loyalist paramilitary.
She also represented the family of Robert Hamill - a Catholic kicked to death by a loyalist mob while RUC officers were nearby.
But it was Ms Nelson’s role as solicitor to the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition against Orange Order parades that attracted most attention.
By the late 1990s the local marching dispute at Drumcree had escalated to become a focus for mass protest and murderous violence.
Ms Nelson told relatives and friends she received a catalogue of threats, but she found it difficult to believe she would be killed for doing her job.
The public inquiry follows a 2004 report on her case by Canadian judge Peter Cory, which gave a chilling insight into Mrs Nelson’s experiences.
Judge Cory wrote: “Rosemary Nelson’s 10-year-old son took a call at home and when he gave the phone to his mother the caller said: You’re dead, you’ll be shot.”
He added: “She had been shopping in a local food market when she noticed that she was being followed around the store by a large man.
“At one point, when other shoppers were not in the vicinity, this man came up to her and told her that ‘if she didn’t stop representing IRA scum, she would be dead’.”
Judge Cory said 11 of Ms Nelson’s clients claimed RUC officers threatened her.
One is alleged to have said: “You’re going to die when you get out. And tell Rosemary she’s going to die.”
The police have always denied the claims, which they argue have been investigated by the then RUC and the Metropolitan police.
On the day she was killed Mrs Nelson drove from her home at around 12.40pm. She braked at a junction opposite Tannaghmore Primary School where her daughter was a pupil.
Police later said a mercury tilt switch in the bomb under her car detonated the device. An explosion ripped through her silver BMW.
Friends and relatives ran to Ms Nelson’s aid and one of her sisters held her hand as she lay fatally wounded in the wreckage.
In the outrage sparked by her murder, the authorities resisted calls for the RUC to be frozen out of the subsequent investigation.
Four years later the murder hunt led by a senior officer from England, but which included RUC officers, ended without charging anyone over the killing.
Approximately £15 million has been spent on the Nelson case so far. Security chiefs and a number of senior politicians question the role of expensive public inquiries, while other murders from the Troubles remain unsolved.
But Param Cumaraswamy today argued no-one could put a price on justice. “While I appreciate taxpayers’ apprehension of the high cost of such a public inquiry, such cost should not be a barrier for the pursuit of truth and justice which are priceless human values,” he said.
“Otherwise impunity will flourish and erode the fabric of society.”
PA