Directors Report May 1999

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May 1999

In the past month we have met both the Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, and the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to express our concerns about the police investigation into the terrible murder of Rosemary Nelson. Given the death threats and other abuse reported by her clients from serving RUC officers, we consider that no RUC officer should be involved in that part of the police investigation which is concerned with the possibility that there was collusion in her death. We are also not satisfied with the official explanations given for the intense security presence in the vicinity of her home in the hours leading up to the murder. We have written to the senior coroner for Northern Ireland, John Leckey, requesting that he preside over the inquest in view of the contentious aspects of the police investigation. We are also mystified by recent press reports that the Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, has told the Police Authority that he had no prior knowledge of threats against Rosemary Nelson. In view of government assurances to us and to the Committee on the Administration of Justice that the Chief Constable had been informed of our concerns for her safety, we are astonished by his assertion of ignorance.

In the meantime, tributes and accolades continue to pour in to the Nelson family. The Robert Hamill Campaign organised a very moving memorial service for her in London on 15th May, and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties are doing the same in Dublin on 15th June.

The Law Society of Northern Ireland, in an extraordinary general meeting attended by some 700 solicitors, voted overwhelmingly to support the United Nations' call for an independent inquiry into the murder of Patrick Finucane. In doing so, they resoundingly reversed their ruling Council's opposition to an inquiry. Unfortunately, instead of responding positively to this unequivocal show of solidarity by the legal profession, the Secretary of State wrote to them asking them how they would ensure that such an inquiry did not impede the police investigation by John Stevens which the Chief Constable hastily put in place in response to our report on this and other deaths. Although we would not have chosen to have this police investigation, now that it is in place, it need only conflict with a full independent inquiry if it is allowed to do so. If the government is truly concerned about the inter-relationship of a police investigation and a public inquiry, it can easily resolve the question it has posed. It can announce now that it will hold a public inquiry into the allegations in the report. An inquiry team can be set up and can start to collate all available information now. If it finds anything relevant to the police investigation, that can be passed to John Stevens, who should also report to the inquiry team. In this way, the investigation and the inquiry need not conflict and would complement each other.

In the past few weeks there have been various shameful public attacks on the reputations of Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson. Ken Maginnis MP has repeatedly claimed that Patrick Finucane was a republican and that the Finucane family is a well-known republican family. Sir John Hermon, a former Chief Constable of the RUC who held that office at the time of Patrick Finucane's murder, has claimed that Patrick Finucane passed information to republican clients and has cast aspersions on both him and Rosemary Nelson, despite the present Chief Constable's recent description of both lawyers as "highly professional solicitors doing nothing more than their professional best to represent the interests of their clients", and despite the information given at Patrick Finucane's inquest by Detective Superintendent Simpson that, "The police refute the claim that Mr Finucane was a member of the PIRA. He was just another law-abiding citizen going about his professional duties in a professional manner." John Taylor MP has also joined in this apparent campaign of vilification, under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. We are surprised that persons of such high office and standing should be engaged in making such unsubstantiated allegations, which would undoubtedly have led to actions for libel had they been said while these two lawyers were alive. Their actions are irresponsible in the extreme. Against the background of the recent and exceptionally brutal murder of Rosemary Nelson, coming as it did so soon after the tenth anniversary of that of Patrick Finucane, these remarks potentially put other lives at risk. Indeed, as these remarks escalate in intensity and frequency, our concern grows for the personal safety of the Finucane and Nelson families and their lawyers, and for some of Rosemary Nelson's more high profile clients.

In the past month I have given interviews to Radio Ulster's Talkback, BBC Radio's Law In Action, and RTE television's Prime Time about collusion, the deaths of Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, and the situation faced by criminal defence lawyers in Northern Ireland. BBC television's Panorama are also planning a programme about the deaths of the two lawyers.

On 8th May we held a joint conference with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on Human Rights and the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement:
Problems and Prospects. It covered a wide range of topics, including policing, equality issues, the new Human Rights Commission, the judiciary, emergency laws, and truth and reconciliation. Over 60 practising and academic lawyers and human rights activists attended from Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Our thanks to the excellent panel of speakers for making this a very successful event.

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has ruled that soldiers will not be granted anonymity unless they can show that they face personal danger. We welcome this ruling, which is exactly the position we advocated in our submissions to the Inquiry. However, a number of soldiers who gave anonymous testimony to the Widgery Tribunal, instead of making personal applications to the new Inquiry for anonymity are challenging the decision by way of a second judicial review. It certainly begins to look as if they have something to hide. Meanwhile, we have begun work analysing some of the documents that have been disclosed about the military aspects of Bloody Sunday.

We have sent detailed comments to the Irish government on its plans to establish a Human Rights Commission. While welcoming the scheme, we have expressed concern about the proposal to limit its presidency to those eligible to be judges of the Superior Courts. We have also commented that by limiting the remit of the Human Rights Commission to those international human rights instruments which have been given the force of law in Ireland, the Commission has been robbed of any effective role, since no such instruments currently have the force of law and Ireland remains the one country in Europe that has yet to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights.

We met Michael Mansfield QC this month with Diane Hamill and Paul Mageean of the Committee on the Administration of Justice to discuss ways forward on the case of Robert Hamill, kicked to death by loyalists two years ago in Portadown while RUC officers allegedly failed to intervene.

We have been asked by their elected representatives to monitor the situation of residents in the Protestant enclave of Graymount in Belfast, who say that they have been subjected to a sectarian campaign of harassment over recent years.

For many years British Irish RIGHTS WATCH monitored the case of Peter Pringle, who was convicted in 1980 for capital murder and robbery, and who was ultimately acquitted in 1995 after the Director of Prosecutions decided not to proceed with a re-trial ordered by a court presided over by Mr Justice O'Flaherty. We were surprised that a re-trial had been ordered, as it seemed to us quite clear that Mr Pringle had suffered a miscarriage of justice, and the DPP's failure to pursue the case suggests that our surprise was justified. Evidence has now emerged which suggests that there may have been an element of judicial bias in the decision to order a re-trial, and we have written to the Irish government raising this issue.

Our French intern, Alexia Brange, has come to the end of her six months' stay with us. It has been a pleasure having her with us, and we wish her every success in the future.

For Peace Justice & Human Rights

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