The Billy Wright Inquiry has found there was no collusion or deliberate wrongdoing by the British state in the INLA murder of the loyalist paramilitary leader in the Maze prison 13 years ago.
The five-year £30 million inquiry however delivered strong criticisms of the NI Prison Service, the police and the intelligence services. It outlined a series of failures, both individual and systemic, which facilitated INLA prisoners who shot dead the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader in the prison on December 27th 1997. But it added crucially that these failures, described variously as "wrongful omissions" or "wrongful acts" were the result of negligence rather than the product of a deliberate plot.
The inquiry, chaired by Lord MacLean, found that INLA prisoners and LVF members should not have been housed in the same H Block at the Maze prison. This decision to locate rival paramilitary prisoners in the same building was compounded by failures to carry out proper prisoner risk assessments.
In particular the inquiry criticises the classification of the INLA men who killed Wright, while serious management problems at the prison were not properly addressed.
The 700-page report also cites a series of intelligence failures relating to both the sharing of information and its analysis.
It also cites the destruction of documents by state officials, detailing how this had hampered the inquiry's deliberations.
The report concludes that while there was no collusion, it regrets that "no explanation emerged in the evidence as to how the two firearms were introduced in to the prison and put into the hands of his INLA murders".
The inquiry chairman also made three key recommendations regarding the handling of documents and the management of prisons in Northern Ireland. It also calls for an overhaul of the Northern Ireland prison system and citing as an example of what is needed the Patten Commission's review of the former RUC which led to the establishment of the PSNI.
The inquiry panel reported: "Given what we discovered about the destruction f prisoners' files, many of which would have been important historical records, we recommend that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland should satisfy himself whether any other prison records have been destroyed and whether proper retention processes are now observed in the NI Prison Service."
It also says that many of the problems at the Maze arose from the fact that it was the sole maximum security prison in the North at the time.
Referring to the fact that the new jail at Maghaberry is now also the sole maximum prison, the Secretary of State and the new justice minister "should satisfy themselves that any relevant lessons from the Maze have been learned for Maghaberry".
Northern Secretary Owen Paterson and justice minister David Ford should also consider ordering a Patten-style investigation which could "pave the way for radical change in the way that the NI Prison Service is managed and how its industrial relations are conducted".
Mr Paterson and Mr Ford are scheduled to meet on Monday to discuss the report and its conclusions and recommendations.
Mr Paterson said the prisoner, who was in the care of the state, should not have been murdered and said he was "sincerely sorry" it had not been prevented.
The dead prisoner's father, David Wright, criticised the inquiry team's "narrow interpretation of collusion".
"It looks like collusion, it sounds like collusion and in my mind amounts to firm and final proof of collusion by state agencies in acts and omissions culminating in Billy Wright's death," he said.
DUP MP Ian Paisley jnr said the report's findings were "convenient conclusions" for the British government. He said the £30 million report was therefore a "whitewash".
The UUP's Tom Elliott welcomed the findings but concluded that the fallout over them underlined the need for no new "costly and open-ended inquiries".
Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd alleged that the LVF, like other loyalist groupings in north Belfast, were "controlled, directed and manipulated by the British state".
Dolores Kelly of the SDLP said: "Perhaps the greatest service this inquiry has done is to recommend that the Prison Service needs the sort of thorough, root-and-branch reform that the Patten process brought to policing."