Pat Finucane murder: collusion, contrition, but not the whole truth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/pat-finucane-murder-report-editorial

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Perhaps the best speech that David Cameron ever made came in June 2010, after he received the Saville report into Bloody Sunday. The then-new prime minister was also the leader of the Conservative and Unionist party, but that historical inheritance did not stand in his way as he made a clean break on Britain's behalf, and apologised for the army having fired the first shots in 1972 on Derry's deadliest day. He applied soothing balm to ancient wounds, and there were half-jokes about him being hailed as a hero on the city's republican streets.

On Wednesday, the same Mr Cameron received Sir Desmond de Silva's review of the state's involvement in the 1989 murder of the human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane, and he duly dusted down the same oratorical record. He spoke of "shocking" official "collusion" in a horrific killing in front of young children, and yet such remarkable words failed to exert the same effect this time. They were immediately undermined when Mr Finucane's family put on a dignified appearance at a press conference, in which they suggested that the de Silva review had failed to root out all of the facts.

At first blush, the family's reluctance to embrace Sir Desmond's conclusions might appear odd. He had, after all, described a time and place in which the security services infiltrated terrorist outfits, acquired information on murderous plans, and then treated these selectively. When the state got wind of a loyalist plot to blow up Gerry Adams, this particular murder was deemed likely to produce chaos, and levers were pulled to prevent it. Other victims, and Sir Desmond does not pretend that Mr Finucane was the only one, were less lucky. An army unit picked up on threats, but – even where it passed these on – the RUC duly did nothing. The British state blundered into a sectarian civil conflict and, when it was not actively fighting itself, it was trying to get a grip on a messy business in very messy ways. Put that way the situation may be understandable, but it was plainly not acceptable. In the traditional fashion of establishment reports, Sir Desmond set up the idea of an "over-arching state conspiracy" only to knock it down, although the world of agents, infiltration and deathlists that he describes would fit with what most people would think of as sinister plots, whether over-arching or not.

So why was the family dissatisfied? Geraldine Finucane is no irreconcilable: the widow went out of her way to accept Mr Cameron's apology in good faith. Yet it was, she said, unclear what he was apologising for, since she still felt she lacked crucial facts. Sir Desmond emphasised that he had unturned new stones, but then so had John Stevens and the retired Canadian judge, Peter Cory, who penned the reports that came before. Both left unturned stones for Sir Desmond, just as he has left others to be flipped in the future. His review substituted for the promised inquiry, but the lack of inquiry powers to commandeer evidence was less important than the fact he stuck to the documents, as opposed to cross-examining witnesses. The British government's plans for secret courts have sparked a fierce row because evidence that hasn't been tested is not really evidence at all. The Finucane case shows why this is not just a lawyerly slogan.

Take ex-minister Douglas Hogg, who weeks before the murder complained in the Commons about lawyers who were "unduly sympathetic" to the IRA, a statement nationalists warned would create assassination targets. Mr Hogg may well have had no such intention, and yet – in the light of all the collusion documented – the victims are hardly going to take that on trust. If he had been put on the witness stand, and probed about where his view had come from, then the truth could have been thrashed out in public view. The same applies to all the other players involved. The gross expense and delays with the Saville report explain Mr Cameron's reluctance to order a repeat, but costs could have been capped without undermining the whole operation. That, regrettably, is the consequence of reviewing the evidence without testing it in the open.

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