A piece of the jigsaw
By Laura Friel
Now there are three. A former British soldier and at the time active
British Military Intelligence agent who, in his role as UDA chief
intelligence officer, scouted Pat Finucane's house and provided a
photograph of their intended victim to the loyalist murder gang.
A former British soldier and active RUC special branch informer who, in his
role as UDA quartermaster, provided the weapons for the killing. And a
British soldier who stole the weapon used in the shooting from a UDR
arsenal.
Three direct links in the conspiracy to murder a Belfast solicitor, whose
death RUC interrogation officers procured and a British minister, Douglas
Hogg, knowingly or unwittingly, politically endorsed.
d then there are the British Military Intelligence officers who colluded
through their agent, Brian Nelson in the updating and reorganisation of UDA
death lists. The intelligence officers who their agent claims were warned
of the murder plot against Finucane but did nothing to prevent it. In the
event of the Stevens Inquiry, the British Intelligence officers who hid a
suitcase of UDA hit lists, which included over 1,000 crown force photo
montages, at a British army barracks. Their actions threw the inquiry team
off the scent for months.
d Colonel `J', a British army commander, who appeared as the chief
defence witness in the trial of Brian Nelson to describe his agent in the
terms of a `hero' whose ``biggest motivation'' was loyalty to the British
army. The list continues with British Cabinet Minister Tom King, whose
letter of support sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions described
Nelson as a valuable agent. And the trial judge, Basil Kelly, who described
Nelson as a man who had shown ``the greatest courage''.
d don't forget Patrick Mayhew, DPP at the time and later British
Secretary of State, and his role in the deal in which 15 of the most
serious charges against Brian Nelson were dropped in return for guilty
pleas on 20 lesser charges. A deal which it has been alleged was designed
to protect details of British involvement in the procurement of loyalist
arms.
The British magazine Private Eye claimed in February 1992 that a trip to
South Africa in 1985 by Nelson to procure loyalist weapons had been
cleared not only by the British Minister of Defence but also by an unnamed
government minister. Neither the minister nor Nelson's trip were mentioned
during the trial.
The bulk of the subsequent illegal arms shipment, which involved another
British agent, Charles Simpson, was not intercepted despite British
Military Intelligence knowledge of the transportation route.
Three weeks before the murder, RUC interrogation officers in Castlereagh
suggested to loyalist detainee Tommy Little, a leading West Belfast UDA man
that he should target Finucane and two other leading Belfast defence
lawyers. Pat Finucane was ``the brains behind the IRA'', the RUC
interrogators said.
Then there's RUC Special Branch, whose agent Billy Stobie provided the
weapons used by the loyalist gang who carried out the Finucane killing.
Stobie insists that he gave his Special Branch handlers enough information
and in sufficient time for them to have prevented the solicitor's murder.
A week before the killing, Stobie was summoned by his UDA commander and
told to provide weapons for an operation they were planning. The UDA leader
rejected a Heckler and Kock offered by Stobie and requested a Browning 9mm,
a weapon more suited for assassination, ``a special job''. ``We're going to
hit a top Provie,'' Stobie was told.
Stobie telephoned his RUC handlers, providing information on the murder
plot which included the name of the gang leader. The UDA leader and two
loyalist squads with which he operated were known to the RUC. Despite the
RUC's vast surveillance and legislative resources, the gang was neither
watched nor intercepted before the murder. The weapons they were to use
were not bugged. The RUC sat on its hands.
Stobie contacted his RUC handlers again on the evening of the shooting when
the operation was clearly imminent. The weapons had been collected from
Stobie. He had seen three members of the gang getting into van and realised
the operation was underway.
When Stobie subsequently complained to the Special Branch about their
inaction, the RUC claimed ``they hadn't had time to get things organised''
and that ``anyway'' Finucane ``was just an IRA man.''
Even if Stobie's information was too late, as the RUC claim, to stop the
killing from happening, it was not too late to apprehend the loyalist
gunmen on their way back, still armed with the murder weapons. The RUC did
nothing. Later still, with the names of the killers known to the RUC, no
one was arrested.
According to Stobie, rather than pursuing Finucane's killers, RUC Special
Branch instigated two plots to frighten their informer to ensure his full
compliance. The first, a thinly disguised death threat, almost exposed
Stobie's role as an RUC agent to the UDA killers upon which he was spying.
The second, in which illegal weapons were planted in Stobie's flat, put him
in court.
Stobie claims that the prosecution case against him collapsed after he
threatened to expose the fact that RUC Special Branch had been informed but
took no action to prevent the Finucane murder.
A recent claim by RUC Chief Ronnie Flanagan that John Stevens had
investigated the murder of Pat Finucane and found no evidence of RUC
collusion was dismissed by Stevens, who said he had never even been asked
to investigate the murder, only the implications of the Nelson trial in
relation to allegations of British army collusion.
Flanagan responded, to head off the growing pressure for a fully
independent inquiry, by requesting Stevens to lead a team of British
detectives to investigate the murder. Last week that team identified their
first suspect, Billy Stobie, and the story of his role as a RUC Special
Branch informer, kept under wraps for over a decade, finally came to light.
As with the case against Brian Nelson before him, the trial of Stobie is
unlikely to establish the full truth behind the murder of Pat Finucane. But
at the very least, Stobie provides just one more piece of the jigsaw and
the picture which is emerging shows more than the mechanics of the Finucane
murder. It exposes the very nature of Britain's role in Ireland and the
operation of its ``dirty little war''.
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