Finucane family reject de Silva report

The widow of murdered Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane today dismissed the report into his death by British barrister Desmond de Silva as “a sham” and “a whitewash”

“This report is not the truth,” she said.

Renewing her call for a full public inquiry into her husband’s 1989 assassinated by British forces, Geraldine Finucane said that the British government had suppressed the truth and attempted to throw all blame on dead individuals and disbanded organisations while exonerating ministers, serving officers and existing security agencies.

Mrs Finucane said: “Yet another British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband, Pat Finucane.

“At every turn it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required - to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its Cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services and to itself.

“At every turn, dead witnesses have been blamed and defunct agencies found wanting. Serving personnel and active state departments appear to have been excused.

“The dirt has been swept under the carpet without any serious attempt to lift the lid on what really happened to Pat and so many others.

“This report is a sham, this report is a whitewash, this report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. But most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth.”

Mrs Finucane said her family had been “misled and humiliated in a cruel and unnecessary fashion” when they were invited to Downing Street last year, only to be told that there would be no public inquiry and that instead Mr Cameron was ordering a behind-closed-doors review of documents.

“I left Downing Street that day so angry I could hardly speak,” she said.

She insisted that the family came to London today prepared to judge the report with “an open mind” and with “a faint hope” that their misgivings would be proved wrong.

But she added: “I regret to say that once again we have been proved right.”

Mrs Finucane said the review had been “compiled by a lawyer with strong links to the Conservative Party who was appointed by the Conservative Government without consultation”.

And she added: “The report is the result of a process into which we have had no input - we have seen no documents, nor heard any witnesses.

“In short, we have had no chance to assess the evidence for ourselves at first hand. We are expected to take the word of the man appointed by the British Government.”

Urgent Appeal