Republican News · Thursday 20 June 2002

Licensed to kill

British agent admits RUC targeted Finucane

"Finucane would be alive today if the peelers hadn't interfered." These are the direct words spoken by Ken Barrett, former RUC Special Branch agent and one of the two loyalist gunmen said to be involved in the 1989 killing of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

The explosive admission came in the first of a two-part Panorama documentary screened by the BBC on Wednesday night. It found that at least four British Crown forces agents are implicated in the solicitor's killing, British Army agent Brian Nelson and RUC Special Branch agents Billy Stobie, Tommy 'Tucker' Little and Ken Barrett.

Barrett went into hiding in England last year after he was exposed as a Special Branch informer by the UDA. He agreed, however, to meet with Panorama reporters.

They secretly recorded conversations over a dozen meetings.

Barrett is heard recalling that loyalists arrested would be primed with Finucane's name by the RUC: "...young fellows, you know... They'd have come out and said to us, they said about Finucane, they say this and they say that, and they must have said it because kids wouldn't come out and say, 'they said about Finucane', because why would they mention Finucane? You understand what I mean? Finucane wouldn't have been a name in their head."

Barrett says that Pat Finucane would not have been targeted by loyalist death squads were it not for the actions of the RUC Special Branch: "Finucane would have been alive today if the peelers hadn't interfered... Solicitors were kind of way taboo, you know what I mean? Like we used a lot of Roman Catholic solicitors ourselves. They were kind of like taboo at the time like. You didn't touch like. Do you understand me, because they came in and seen us and all like."

Barrett also recalls his meeting with the Special Branch officer who encouraged him to target Pat Finucane: "He says, 'He'll have to go. He'll have to go. He's a thorn in everybody's side. He'll have to go'... He was determined on pursuing that like. That's the one he wanted. They didn't want any fucking about. They didn't want to wait months. They wanted it done."

According to Barrett, British Army agent and UDA intelligence officer Brian Nelson supplied him with Finucane's photograph six days before the assassination and showed him where the solicitor lived.

"By copying his targeting files to murder gangs all over Northern Ireland," Panorama reveals, "[Brian] Nelson had bequeathed a deadly legacy. The officer ultimately responsible for this was Colonel Gordon Kerr. He had recruited Nelson; he was commanding officer of the unit that ran him. He never hid his contempt for the Stevens Inquiry."

Barrett's evidence undermines claims by the former Commanding Officer of the Force Research Unit, now Brigadier Kerr, who said that Nelson thought the intended victim was one of Finucane's clients, the late former hunger striker and Sinn Féin Councillor Pat McGeown. The BBC programme that his claim "cannot be true".

Reacting to the Panorama programme, Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness said: "Tony Blair's worst fears have now been realised. This is massive. This could be even bigger than Bloody Sunday." He said the documentary makes a compelling case for a full international public inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane.