Secretary of State's claim Finucane case is unique is 'gross insult' to victims - Allister
The claim by the government that the “unique circumstances” of the Pat Finucane case justify a standalone, independent public inquiry have come in for further criticism – amid claims that Hilary Benn’s justification for a special probe don’t stand up to scrutiny.
TUV leader Jim Allister said the government’s assertion that the Finucane case is unique is a “gross insult” to victims.
And a leading barrister has questioned the government’s reliance on a promise made at the failed Weston Park talks in 2004 in its reasoning for announcing a public inquiry into the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Writing in today’s News Letter, Austen Morgan said the reasoning set out by Secretary of State Hilary Benn was “far from faultless”. The barrister, who also writes and lectures on United Kingdom constitutional law, argues that Mr Benn had “abandoned an arguable constitutional position on truth and justice, for the ideological rewriting of the history of the troubles as simply state abuse”.
Announcing the inquiry in Parliament on Wednesday, Secretary of State Benn said given the “unique circumstances” in this case the only option was a public inquiry. Tory MP and shadow NI secretary Alex Burghart asked what the “unique circumstances” were – and warned that it could set a precedent for dealing with Troubles-era murders. Mr Benn cited two previous promises from government to hold a public inquiry.
Pat Finucane, a Belfast based criminal defence lawyer, was murdered at his home in front of his wife and children by loyalist terrorists in 1989. His son, John Finucane, is the Sinn Fein MP for North Belfast.
Hilary Benn said the case was unique because of the “commitment given on two previous occasions”. He also said that a 2019 Supreme Court ruling found that “all the previous investigations had been insufficient to enable the State to discharge its obligations under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights”.
Jim Allister MP told the News Letter: “The double standards here are appalling. As I pointed out to the Secretary of State yesterday, not only are the Finucane family being treated differently from everyone else they are again being offered something which they had previously rejected.
“It is a gross insult to the thousands of innocent victims in Northern Ireland that Mr Benn should describe this murder and this one alone as ‘unique’.
“That the new government should do this at such an early stage sends entirely the wrong message to innocent victims.
“As the excellent editorial in Thursday’s News Letter highlighted, Lord Trimble had previously made the point that any inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane should also involve a probe into the activities of Mr Finucane.
“Wicked and evil as this murder was, it was no more wicked and evil than the murders of Resident Magistrate William Staunton (who was shot by the IRA in front of his young daughter and her school friends), Judge Rory Conaghan (another judge shot in front of his daughter), Resident Magistrate Martin McBirney (shot again in his home in front of his family), Judge William Doyle (murdered as he left mass), Lord and Lady Gibson or law lecturer Edgar Graham. One also thinks of attack on the family of Judge Tom Travers in which young Mary Travers was murdered.
“For all the lectures about truth and justice, the truth is that the party John Finucane now represents not only defended and justified those wicked murders at the time but continues to do so right up to and including the present day.”
The new inquiry will be held under the 2005 Inquiries Act – something the Finucane family have objected to for almost two decades.
On Wednesday RTE reported that the family’s lawyers said “the devil will be in the detail” as the terms of reference are so far unknown – as are the “levels of co-operation it will receive from elements of the British state”.
In April 2005, the Pat Finucane Centre published an article penned by Amnesty International on its website arguing that the Inquiries Act calling for all judges in the UK and abroad to boycott any inquiry set up under the law – including any into Pat Finucane’s murder.
It said the Act 2005 “deals a fatal blow to any possibility of public scrutiny of and accountability for state abuses. Any inquiry under this legislation would automatically fall far short of the requirements in international human rights law and standards for effective remedies for victims of human rights violations and their families”.
What has changed to reconcile the family to a probe under the same act now is unclear.