When state forces use terror tactics, terrorism is the inevitable winner
At the outset Stevens emphasises his conclusions that there was an absence of accountability, because the relevant authorities not only failed to keep records, but also withheld intelligence information as well as evidence that British agents were involved in collusion with the murderers of Patrick Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert.
The conspiracy involved not only the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its agents, but also the British Ministry of Defence, which engaged in the "late disclosure" of documents during all three of Stevens' investigations stretching back over the past 14 years. Pat Finucane's family refused to co-operate with the investigations. Their lack of faith in the Stevens team is understandable on the evidence of this report, which is not only a damning indictment of the behaviour of the police and military, but also conclusive evidence of the need for a full judicial inquiry into the murders.
The Stevens report is not a whitewash, but it still leaves a lot to be desired because at times it engages in prevarication. Maybe the prevarication was nothing like the procrastination and obstruction that the author had to endure, but that is all the more reason why he should have called a spade a spade. The "late disclosure" of documents was nothing short of obstruction of justice and even collusion in murder on the part of the Ministry of Defence.
"It has been necessary to interview the same witnesses a number of times because of the failure to provide complete information at the time of asking," Stevens noted. Those people should be charged as accessories to murder. That is the only way that this kind of contemptible conduct is likely to be stamped out for once and for all.
While the case of Patrick Finucane has received extensive publicity over the years, there has been very little about the murder of Brian Adam Lambert, a young Protestant with no criminal record, nor any history of paramilitary involvement. He was murdered on November 9, 1987, the day after the Remembrance Day massacre in Enniskillen. He was apparently mistakenly targeted; he did not even kick with the right foot. Yet the authorities still colluded in protecting those who murdered him.
The police engaged in their own shoot-to-kill policy in targeting individuals earlier in the decade. John Stalker of the Great Manchester Police Force was assigned to investigate a series of killings in the North in 1982, but when he refused to engage in a whitewash, he was smeared. Not only that, a totally innocent friend of his, Kevin Taylor, was framed as well in order to damage Stalker, because he was recommending that 11 RUC officers should be charged with obstructing justice.
The British police fabricated rumours that Taylor had been involved in drug running and they even arraigned him on trumped-up charges of having supposedly defrauded a bank of £250,000.
The case collapsed when it was shown that the police had fabricated the evidence and Stalker was cleared of all charges of impropriety. The Greater Manchester Police Force paid Taylor over £1 million in damages, which was the largest settlement ever paid by the police in Britain.
The charges that Stalker recommended be brought against the policemen involved in the obstruction of justice were not pursued. In January 1988, Patrick Mayhew, then British Attorney General, concluded that it was not in the public interest to prosecute those policemen, even though there was clear evidence against them. They got away with being accessories to murder.
The whole British judicial system was clearly corrupted from top to bottom when one also considers such notorious convictions as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, in which the police fabricated evidence to secure murder convictions against innocent individuals. Certain elements of police, both in Britain and Northern Ireland, had a virtual licence to collude with murderers, so nobody should be surprised that it happened again on Sunday, February 12, 1989, when Pat Finucane was murdered in the presence of his wife and children.
Throughout his investigations Stevens stated that he "always operated from the premise that those involved in policing and security duties in Northern Ireland work and are subject to the rule of law".
In any other democratic country such a statement would be so redundant that it would be considered amazing, but not in Britain or those parts of Ireland where British rule extended, because the evidence that the police and army operated above and outside the law is overwhelming and stretches back for over 80 years.
The British had been covering up the shooting of innocent people in Ireland for decades. On November 21, 1920, British Auxiliaries fired into a crowd of spectators at a football game at Croke Park, killing 12 innocent people, including one of the players. Scores of other were wounded.
The British claimed that their people were fired upon. Yeah, one of the footballers on the field fired at them. Nobody really believed them.
Brigadier General Frank Crozier, the commander of the Auxiliaries, resigned in protest, because the British Government was condoning the murderous conduct of his men. One of his officers described what had happened at Croke Park as "the most disgraceful show I have ever seen". He said that Auxiliaries "fired into the crowd without any provocation whatever".
The IRA had killed two Auxiliaries and a number of undercover agents in Dublin that morning. It was part of Michael Collins' overall plan to undermine the British by targeting their intelligence agents in order to knock out what he considered the eyes and ears of the Dublin Castle regime.
He knew that if he cut off their sources of intelligence, the British would retaliate blindly and drive the Irish people into the arms of the republicans.
Little over a half a century later the British made the same mistakes again on another Bloody Sunday, this time in Derry on January 30, 1972. They claimed they were fired on that day, too, but few people here believed them.
Of course, they were provoked, but they retaliated by behaving as terrorists. It was a case of classic stupidity expecting
people to support them in a fight against terrorism as they engaged in terrorism themselves. They were even worse than the terrorists that they were condemning, because they were sanctimonious hypocrites as well.
The British and US military are involved in policing in Iraq. This week in Mosul at least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed by American marines, who fired on the crowd after they said they were shot at. That was also what the tank crew said a week earlier after firing on the hotel where the international journalists were gathered in Baghdad.
Did anyone believe them? British and US forces were welcomed by Iraqi citizens. British soldiers were also welcomed in nationalist areas of Belfast, but that was all changed when the troops began behaving as a law unto themselves.
Will people ever learn that once the forces representing law and order start fighting terrorism with terrorist tactics, that terrorists inevitably win?
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