Britain offered a public apology on Wednesday over its the murky role of its security forces in the 1989 killing of a Belfast lawyer and pledged to publish a report into the extent of police and army involvement in the attack.
The government appointed a leading human rights lawyer to review a mountain of secret evidence into the slaying of Patrick Finucane. The investigator, Desmond da Silva, is supposed to publish his findings by December next year.
“The government is deeply sorry for what happened,” British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson told lawmakers in London.
Finucane’s family expressed fury that Britain had dismissed their long-held demand for a public investigation into the killing. Two members of a Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association, shot Finucane 14 times as he was eating a meal with his wife and three children in their home.
Finucane’s widow, Geraldine, called the decision “nothing less than an insult.”
She said her family’s lawyers should be permitted to peruse confidential British documents and question witnesses from Northern Ireland’s police, British Army intelligence unit and Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5.
“We are being asked to accept the result of a process from which we are completely excluded ... a shoddy, half-hearted alternative to a proper public inquiry,” said Mrs Finucane, who was herself shot and wounded in the 1989 attack.
However, Paterson said a fact-finding inquiry would be financially wasteful, too slow and unnecessary. He said that senior English police officer, Sir John Stevens, spent more than a decade probing the case. In 2003, Stevens concluded that police and army intelligence agents encouraged the targeting of Finucane and supplied guns to his killers.
Paterson said the bulk of Stevens’ evidence — 9,256 written statements, 10,391 documents exceeding 1 million pages, and 16,194 exhibits of potential evidence — has remained secret, but de Silva would be free to read it all and report its contents.
“The public now need to know the extent and nature of that collusion,” he said.
Paterson made his announcement a day after the Finucanes held a closed-door meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Paterson in London.
De Silva, 71, did not comment. He is currently on a UN panel investigating Israel’s use of force against Gaza-bound ships last year. He has also overseen UN war crimes investigations in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Paterson said de Silva would re-interview senior former security officials, pore over the Stevens archive and “produce a full public account. Details in papers and statements that have been kept secret for decades will finally be exposed.”
At the time, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) said it killed Finucane because of his high-profile defense of Irish Republican Army (IRA) clients and because the UDA believed he was an IRA member too. Three of Finuane’s brothers were IRA members, but Stevens said he found no evidence that Patrick Finucane was in the underground organization.
The IRA spent three decades shooting and bombing in the hope of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. Militants within Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority attacked Catholics in a bid to terrorize the Catholic community.
Both paramilitary camps announced ceasefires in the mid-1990s to permit peace talks that produced the Good Friday peace accord of 1998 and, ultimately, a stable Catholic-Protestant government for Northern Ireland. However, the question of British state involvement in the Protestant side’s bloodshed remains a point of bitter contention. Finucane’s case has the highest profile internationally because of his status as a lawyer.
Australia has announced an agreement with the tiny Pacific nation Nauru enabling it to send hundreds of immigrants to the barren island. The deal affects more than 220 immigrants in Australia, including some convicted of serious crimes. Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke signed the memorandum of understanding on a visit to Nauru, the government said in a statement on Friday. “It contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” it said. “Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic
ANGER: Unrest worsened after a taxi driver was killed by a police vehicle on Thursday, as protesters set alight government buildings across the nation Protests worsened overnight across major cities of Indonesia, far beyond the capital, Jakarta, as demonstrators defied Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s call for calm. The most serious unrest was seen in the eastern city of Makassar, while protests also unfolded in Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta. By yesterday morning, crowds had dispersed in Jakarta. Troops patrolled the streets with tactical vehicles and helped civilians clear trash, although smoke was still rising in various protest sites. Three people died and five were injured in Makassar when protesters set fire to the regional parliament building during a plenary session on Friday evening, according to
‘NEO-NAZIS’: A minister described the rally as ‘spreading hate’ and ‘dividing our communities,’ adding that it had been organized and promoted by far-right groups Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country yesterday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis. “March for Australia” rallies against immigration were held in Sydney, and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s Web site. “Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the Web site said. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.” The group also said it was concerned about culture,
CRACKDOWN: The Indonesian president vowed to clamp down on ‘treason and terrorism,’ while acceding to some protest demands to revoke lawmaker benefits Protests in Indonesia over rising living costs and inequality intensified overnight, prompting Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to cancel a planned trip to China, while demonstrators reportedly targeted the homes of the finance minister and several lawmakers. Rioters entered Indonesian Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati’s residence near Jakarta early yesterday, but were repelled by armed forces personnel, Kompas reported. Items were taken from the homes of lawmaker Ahmad Sahroni and two others, according to Detik.com. The reports of looting could not be independently verified, and the finance ministry has not responded to requests for comment. The protests were sparked by outrage over
RSS