Pat Finucane murder - Justice denied

Decades on from the murder in front of his wife and three children of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, his family’s tireless quest for justice remains — thanks to yesterday’s unsatisfactory Supreme Court ruling in London — unfinished.

The judges found that, as Mrs Finucane has argued, there has been never been a comprehensive inquiry into her husband’s death at the hands of a loyalist terror squad and, indeed, that the “unequivocal” pledge of a public inquiry made by the then UK prime minister David Cameron was not kept.

Whatever comfort those findings encouraged was dashed when the court said the decision not to hold a public inquiry was a matter not of law but for the UK government’s “political judgment”, adding that it was made in good faith.

The ruling in no way dent the case for a public inquiry into a killing that according to an investigation by a former UN war crimes prosecutor pointed to “shocking” levels of state collusion involving the army, police and MI5. The Taoiseach must maintain the demands that he has been making for the justice that only a public inquiry can begin to deliver.