More cracks in RUC Finucane story
By Pádraig MacDabhaid
``The news that yet another loyalist has been charged by the Stevens team investigating the 1989 killing of lawyer Pat Finucane highlights once again the failure of the RUC in their original investigation.
This follows revelations that one of those arrested for the Finucane murder, William Stobie, was an RUC Special Branch informer and that the information which led to the arrest of Stobie and another man, Mark Barr, had been in the hands of the RUC for almost 10 years.
At a high court bail application for Stobie, it was disclosed that NIO civil servant Neil Mulholland, a former journalist with the Sunday Life, was the man who passed on the information which led to the arrests, but even more sinister was the revelation that Mulholland was given this information in June 1990 by Stobie, to be published if anything happened to the loyalist informer, and that hepassed it on to the RUC on 7 September 1990.
A senior RUC officer subsequently decided that Stobie had no case to answer. This raises serious questions about the role of the RUC in the murder.
The evidence which led to Stobie's arrest was given to the Stevens inquiry by Neil Mulholland after the investigation was reopened last April, the same information he had given to the RUC in oral form in 1990. From this information, the Stevens inquiry came to the conclusion that the RUC agent Stobie was present when Finucane's murder was planned, that Stobie supplied the weapons, and was involved in recovering them after the killing.
That the RUC could not establish this from Mulholland's information is extremely alarming.
What is even more worrying is Stobie's claim, repeated at the bail hearing, that while acting as a Special Branch informer he had told his handlers five days before the murder that he had been told to provide two guns for the murder ``of a top Provo''.
On the evening of the Finucane murder, Stobie claims to have told his handlers that he had handed out the two weapons and he later informed them of the movements of a 9mm Browning used in the attack.
Stobie's lawyer, Peter Irvine, said ``on none of these occasions was any action taken on behalf of Special Branch to try to stop the murder or to arrest any of the persons concerned or to seize one of the weapons.
``Special Branch was aware that a high profile murder bid was to be carried out, they were aware of the identity of the UDA Commander directing the operation, the location of the weapons and of the disposal of one of the murder weapons.
``A covert operation was carried out by police in relation to the moving of the Browning after the murder. Police were fully aware of the movement of that weapon - they observed the route, but no one was arrested in relation to the murder''.
Why, then was nobody charged using Mulholland's information in 1990, or even worse, why was the murder not stopped by the RUC, who had detailed knowledge of the attack?
Meanwhile, the independence of the Stevens inquiry has once again come under scrutiny after it was revealed that the RUC has been allowed to take an active role in the investigation itself.
It emerged on Friday, 30 July, that the RUC were allowed to take a hands on role in the arrests of three men questioned over Pat Finucane's murder. An inquiry spokeswoman refused to comment on the level of RUC involvement in the investigation of collusion charges.
When asked to comment on the fears of human rights campaigners that the controversial inquiry could no longer claim to have any independence from the RUC, the spokeswomen said, ``that is a matter for the politicians''.
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