British army and police implicated in murder of Irish civil rights lawyer (1988)
Intelligence is supposed to be about saving lives, but this report paints a picture of army, police and MI5 officers coolly and methodically making decisions about who should live and who should die. Most of the agents and informers used to infiltrate the paramilitaries were themselves actively involved in terrorism: amid the paramilitary squalor there are few moral absolutes. Yet the de Silva report lays out in 500 pages of intricate and unsparing detail a saga that Mr Cameron several times today – entirely correctly – described as shocking. In the case of Pat Finucane, intelligence agencies were aware of several threats to his life but did not alert him to them. The last threat reached MI5 in December 1988: less than two months later he was dead, shot 14 times with a gun stolen from the army.
Far more attention was paid, the report concluded, to individuals under threat of attack from the IRA. It uncovered one MI5 memo which remarked that the head of Special Branch was "unlikely to trip over himself" to safeguard republicans regarded as a thorn in the side of the security forces. The report confirms that state agents played key roles in the murder, actively facilitating the assassination, and that the loyalist organisation involved obtained around 85 per cent of its information from sources within the security forces. In sum, the report concluded – and the Prime Minister accepted – that there was considerable doubt whether the solicitor would have been murdered without the involvement of elements of the state. After the deed came a cover-up of startling proportions.
Police and army intelligence moved heaven and earth to obstruct successive inquiries. They lied, the report concluded: they may even have started a fire that broke out in Lord Stevens' office during his investigation. Army officers and defence officials, the Prime Minister said grimly, gave the Secretary of State for Defence "highly misleading and factually inaccurate advice". Only the Cabinet of the day was exonerated, the report finding no trace of ministerial knowledge of what went on...
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/editorial-finucane-lays-bare-the-amoral-face-of-britain-8412034.html
Extracted comment: In time-honoured British tradition a judge-lead inquiry brings to light some shocking and shameful facts about the corrupt, and in this case murderous, machinations of the British security services, police and highest political echelons, yet astonishingly comes to the conclusion that no ministers, no servant of the state can be implicated or held responsible (echos of Hutton, Leveson etc. !?!). Hillsborough, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, the phone-hacking affair, the shoot-to kill policy and John Stalker's thwarted inquiry, and yes the Saville scandal all point to one inescapable conclusion: the ruling classes will always protect themselves and their lackies, justice in this class-ridden country is a myth and an accident of birth, and that there is something deeply rotten at the heart of the British establishment. And to think that our leaders have the bare-faced temerity to preach to other nations on how they should aspire to our democratic standards. Tell that to relatives of the 3000 people, who have died in police custody over the past 30 years, for which not one officer has been held responsible. Not one.
Also see:
Soldiers by SUSAN MCKAY The British government has shamelessly covered its tracks in relation to abuse of its authority in Ireland, and continues to do so. It is time to talk about what happened to us all during those long, dark years of conflict & hatred, when we lived in the same houses, but in different worlds
British agents 'facilitated the murder' of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane during the Troubles
Pat Finucane's IRA and other republican clients made him deeply unpopular in police and military circles - Finucane, one of Belfast's most prominent solicitors, was regarded by the security authorities as a thorn in their flesh due to his activities in representing IRA and other republican clients. His unpopularity in police and military circles was so well-known that within days of his murder allegations were made in Belfast that the loyalist gunmen who killed him had been assisted by intelligence personnel. The first defence counsel to be killed during the troubles, he appeared in a series of high-profile cases representing republicans and to a lesser extent loyalist clients. His Belfast city-centre practice was one of only a handful of firms which specialised in cases involving republican and loyalist suspects charged under anti-terrorist legislation. Among his most prominent clients was republican icon Bobby Sands, who died on hungerstrike in 1981. Mr Finucane also represented many other hungerstriking prisoners who were members of the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army. In another case he acted for the widow of a man shot dead by police in a so-called “shoot to kill” incident. At one point he walked out of a court hearing on the incident, denouncing it as a farce. He successfully defended former hungerstriker Pat McGeown, another leading republican figure, unexpectedly securing his release after he was charged with the IRA killings of two army corporals in 1988. Mr Finucane had been regarded with suspicion from much earlier since his brother John, who died in a car accident in 1972, was claimed by the IRA as one of its members. After the solicitor's death loyalist sources claimed that several members of their organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, which shot Mr Finucane, had been encouraged to target him by police...
Film remembers Indian lawyer Shahid Azmi as symbol of hope
Far more attention was paid, the report concluded, to individuals under threat of attack from the IRA. It uncovered one MI5 memo which remarked that the head of Special Branch was "unlikely to trip over himself" to safeguard republicans regarded as a thorn in the side of the security forces. The report confirms that state agents played key roles in the murder, actively facilitating the assassination, and that the loyalist organisation involved obtained around 85 per cent of its information from sources within the security forces. In sum, the report concluded – and the Prime Minister accepted – that there was considerable doubt whether the solicitor would have been murdered without the involvement of elements of the state. After the deed came a cover-up of startling proportions.
Police and army intelligence moved heaven and earth to obstruct successive inquiries. They lied, the report concluded: they may even have started a fire that broke out in Lord Stevens' office during his investigation. Army officers and defence officials, the Prime Minister said grimly, gave the Secretary of State for Defence "highly misleading and factually inaccurate advice". Only the Cabinet of the day was exonerated, the report finding no trace of ministerial knowledge of what went on...
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/editorial-finucane-lays-bare-the-amoral-face-of-britain-8412034.html
Extracted comment: In time-honoured British tradition a judge-lead inquiry brings to light some shocking and shameful facts about the corrupt, and in this case murderous, machinations of the British security services, police and highest political echelons, yet astonishingly comes to the conclusion that no ministers, no servant of the state can be implicated or held responsible (echos of Hutton, Leveson etc. !?!). Hillsborough, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, the phone-hacking affair, the shoot-to kill policy and John Stalker's thwarted inquiry, and yes the Saville scandal all point to one inescapable conclusion: the ruling classes will always protect themselves and their lackies, justice in this class-ridden country is a myth and an accident of birth, and that there is something deeply rotten at the heart of the British establishment. And to think that our leaders have the bare-faced temerity to preach to other nations on how they should aspire to our democratic standards. Tell that to relatives of the 3000 people, who have died in police custody over the past 30 years, for which not one officer has been held responsible. Not one.
Also see:
Soldiers by SUSAN MCKAY The British government has shamelessly covered its tracks in relation to abuse of its authority in Ireland, and continues to do so. It is time to talk about what happened to us all during those long, dark years of conflict & hatred, when we lived in the same houses, but in different worlds
(a moving memoir of communal violence & insurgency, with lessons for us all - DS)
British agents 'facilitated the murder' of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane during the Troubles
Pat Finucane's IRA and other republican clients made him deeply unpopular in police and military circles - Finucane, one of Belfast's most prominent solicitors, was regarded by the security authorities as a thorn in their flesh due to his activities in representing IRA and other republican clients. His unpopularity in police and military circles was so well-known that within days of his murder allegations were made in Belfast that the loyalist gunmen who killed him had been assisted by intelligence personnel. The first defence counsel to be killed during the troubles, he appeared in a series of high-profile cases representing republicans and to a lesser extent loyalist clients. His Belfast city-centre practice was one of only a handful of firms which specialised in cases involving republican and loyalist suspects charged under anti-terrorist legislation. Among his most prominent clients was republican icon Bobby Sands, who died on hungerstrike in 1981. Mr Finucane also represented many other hungerstriking prisoners who were members of the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army. In another case he acted for the widow of a man shot dead by police in a so-called “shoot to kill” incident. At one point he walked out of a court hearing on the incident, denouncing it as a farce. He successfully defended former hungerstriker Pat McGeown, another leading republican figure, unexpectedly securing his release after he was charged with the IRA killings of two army corporals in 1988. Mr Finucane had been regarded with suspicion from much earlier since his brother John, who died in a car accident in 1972, was claimed by the IRA as one of its members. After the solicitor's death loyalist sources claimed that several members of their organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, which shot Mr Finucane, had been encouraged to target him by police...
Film remembers Indian lawyer Shahid Azmi as symbol of hope
