Britain eyeing N. Ireland killings
LONDON -- Britain will hold inquiries into allegations its security forces helped paramilitary gangs carry out killings in Northern Ireland, the government said yesterday.
Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy announced the move in response to reports released from retired Canadian Supreme Court Judge Peter Cory that criticized authorities in four cases dogged by allegations that police, soldiers, or prison guards colluded with paramilitary gangs behind the killings.
"Justice Cory's reports raise serious questions which it is right to address further," Murphy told the British Parliament.
"I am under no illusions that confronting the past is a difficult and painful process. The government and its agencies are ready to play their part."
Cory's report, presented to the British government in October but kept secret until yesterday, examined the killings of Catholic lawyers Pat Finucane, shot to death by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, and Rosemary Nelson, killed by a car bomb planted by Protestant militants in 1999.
Also reviewed were the 1997 killing of Robert Hamill, a Catholic civilian kicked to death by a Protestant crowd, and the death of Billy "King Rat" Wright, a Protestant "loyalist" guerrilla chief shot dead inside the Maze Prison by Catholic inmates the same year.
Relatives of victims and human rights groups welcomed the news that separate inquiries into the Nelson, Hamill and Wright cases would begin as soon as possible.
"For the last seven years, from the night my brother was attacked and allowed to be murdered in cold blood, [an inquiry] is all we've ever asked for," Hamill's sister Diane told BBC radio.
Wright's father, David, looked forward to the inquiry, while Nelson's family issued a statement saying they were "horrified and saddened, if not entirely surprised," by Cory's account of threats allegedly directed at her by police before her death.
But there was anger the probe into the most high-profile of the four cases -- the Finucane killing -- will be delayed because a man faces trial for his murder.
"The British government continues to cover up the truth about the death of my husband with their delaying tactics," said Geraldine Finucane, who saw her husband gunned down at their Belfast home by the Protestant Ulster Defense Association.
"Justice Cory's report confirms that there was a state policy of targeting and assassination."
Cory said there was "strong evidence" police and military intelligence had colluded in Finucane's death, and that the case "may be one of the rare situations where a public inquiry will be of greater benefit to a community than prosecutions."
The Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998, has brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, but controversy continues over the actions of illegal guerrilla groups and the security forces during three decades of sectarian violence. Despite yesterday's announcement, Britain is reluctant to organize costly probes into any more of the 1,800 unsolved killings arising from the conflict and is looking at other ways of dealing with the legacy of "the Troubles."
"It is important that we do try in Northern Ireland to move beyond the past," Prime Minister Tony Blair told a news conference in London.
"I don't know that necessarily a truth and reconciliation commission is the right way to do it, but I think there needs to be some way of trying to both allow people to express their grief and their pain and indeed their anger."
