Police chief meeting with murder victim's family

Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens is to hold his first face-to-face meeting with the family of murder Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane next week, it emerged tonight.

Mr Stevens has been investigating the murder of Mr Finucane in his north Belfast home in February 1989.

Last year he concluded there was collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries.

Mr Finucane’s widow Geraldine confirmed the meeting will take place in Belfast next Monday. She said she would stress at it the need for an independent public inquiry rather than an investigation.

She said: “My family will meet Commissioner Stevens to tell him that we do not want this investigation and that the prosecution of individuals is not our priority.

“We want the truth.

“The families have no input into a police investigation. It is carried out in secret. The family will have no input into any future trials.”

The case for an inquiry into Mr Finucane’s killing was the focus of a report by retired Canadian judge Peter Cory who also examined five other controversial killings during the Troubles.

Judge Cory handed in a report to the Irish Government on two cases and another to the British government on four cases affecting their jurisdiction.

Dublin published its report in December and ordered an inquiry into collusion between the IRA and some gardaí in the double murder of senior RUC officers Bob Buchanan and Harry Breen in 1989.

However, the British government has still not published its report on four murders – Mr Finucane’s, Portadown Catholic Robert Hammill’s in 1997, Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright’s in the Maze Prison in 1997 and Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson in 1999.

Judge Cory contacted the Finucane, Nelson, Hamill and Wright families last month to inform them he had recommended inquiries into each case.

The British government’s failure to publish the report has been criticised by Sinn Féin, by the SDLP, by human rights groups and by the Labour MP Kevin McNamara.

Nationalists insist the British government had broken a pledge at the time Judge Cory was appointed in 2001 to abide by his recommendations.

Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy has, however, insisted Judge Cory’s findings cannot be published until all security and legal implications have been addressed.

The Finucane family was last month granted, in the Belfast High Court, the right to challenge the British government’s decision in a judicial review.

Mrs Finucane said tonight her family would not accept any conclusion or recommendations from a “secret investigation”.

She stated: “We want the opportunity to examine, in public, all relevant material and for our legal representatives to cross-examine all relevant witnesses.

“We want to determine who was involved and at what level.

“We expect the British government to implement Judge Cory’s recommendation forthwith.

“Any delay as a result of this continued investigation could only be interpreted as a dishonest attempt to prevent the establishment of the public inquiry to which we are entitled.”