Pat Finucane Murder - 1989 to 2019 timeline

The murder is one of the most notorious in the Troubles.

Pat Finucane was a 39-year-old solicitor who was shot dead by loyalist paramiltaries in February, 1989.

Mr Finucane, a high profile lawyer who was often involved in paramilitary related cases, was shot and killed in front of his wife and three children at their home in north Belfast.

His death has for the past three decades been at the centre of allegations that members of the security forces colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to the extent that they could have stopped the killing.

A series of investigations were led by a senior police officer, John Stevens, between 1989 and 1999.

The third of John Stevens’ investigations found in 1999 that there was collusion in Mr Finucane’s murder.

In 2001 the British and Irish governments agreed that an international judge would investigate Mr Finucane’s killing.

In May 2002, former former Canadian supreme court judge Mr Justice Peter Cory was appointed to probe the allegations of collusion in the 1989 murder, and five other Troubles related deaths.

The Cory Collusion Inquiry Report on Pat Finucane, published in April 2004, found that there was collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the British intelligence service MI5.

Judge Cory concluded that military and police intelligence knew of the murder plot but failed to intervene. He recommended that a public inquiry should be held into the killing.

Former prime minister David Cameron decided not to hold a public inquiry but ordered an investigation into the killing by a former UN war crimes prosecutor.

The subsequent review by Sir Desmond de Silva QC found there was “no overarching state conspiracy” in Mr Finucane’s death but identified “shocking” levels of collusion involving the army, police and MI5.

Mr Finucane’s widow, Geraldine, has described Sir Desmond’s 2012 report as a “whitewash” and has waged a lengthy legal battle for a public inquiry.

In February last year, she lost the latest round of the fight at the Court of Appeal in Belfast.

Three judges dismissed her challenge against a ruling in 2015 that the 2011 decision by Mr Cameron to reject a public inquiry was lawful.

The Finucane family lost a Supreme Court challenge on Wednesday over the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the killing.

The Supreme Court in London ruled that Mrs Finucane had been given “an unequivocal undertaking to hold a public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s death”, but that the “change of heart on the part of the government” was made in good faith.

Giving the judgment of the court, Lord Kerr found that the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the murder was a matter for the Government’s “political judgment”.