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PLEASE NOTE:
This executive summary has been edited to protect the identity of certain persons in order to preserve their right to life and their right to a fair trial.
The full submission which it summarises is confidential for the same reasons.
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British Irish rights watch SUBMISSION TO THE ROSEMARY NELSON INQUIRY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. INTRODUCTION
On 15th March 1999, solicitor Rosemary Nelson was blown up by a bomb attached to the underside of her car by loyalist paramilitaries. She suffered horrific injuries and died two hours later.
Rosemary Nelson had a thriving high street law practice in her home town of Lurgan, providing a variety of legal services to the local population. Her clientele was drawn from both the Catholic/nationalist and the Protestant/unionist communities. She was an able advocate with a caring attitude towards her clients and a passion for justice. The majority of her cases were very ordinary, but she had a few high-profile clients whose cases attracted a lot of publicity. These included [REDACTED], the family of Robert Hamill, and the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition.
The timing of Rosemary Nelson’s murder was significant. It happened ten years after the murder of Patrick Finucane, a Belfast solicitor. At one level it was clearly an attempt to destabilise the peace process in Northern Ireland. At another, it put an end to the career of an able advocate who, like Patrick Finucane, was effective in upholding her clients’ rights. Thirdly, as in Patrick Finucane’s case, her murder sent a clear message to defence lawyers generally to keep their heads down.
No-one has yet been convicted, or indeed prosecuted for Rosemary Nelson’s murder. Moreover, investigations into the threats and abuse that she suffered in the months leading up to her death have not resulted in any disciplinary action. It is therefore crucial that the present Inquiry provides a full, effective investigation into all of the circumstances surrounding this horrific murder and the allegations of state collusion that have been raised surrounding it.
2. THE INQUIRY’S TERMS OF REFERENCE
The present Inquiry was established following the recommendations of Judge Peter Cory in October 2003. The terms of reference given to the Inquiry are, however, too narrow in scope. In particular, there is no mention of collusion, despite the fact that Judge Cory viewed his primary task as the examination of whether there was a case to answer that collusion may have occurred in the Nelson case. Secondly, the terms of reference do not mention the potential involvement of the army in Rosemary Nelson’s death, despite the fact that at least one serving soldier was a suspect in the case.
British Irish rights watch believes that these important aspects of the case must be examined by the present Inquiry and urges it to seek amendments to its terms of reference to ensure that they are fully explored.
3. THE SEEDS OF MURDER
From early 1997 until her death, Rosemary Nelson had an increasing caseload of clients arrested under emergency laws in force in Northern Ireland. Many lawyers who represented such clients reported that they were subjected to threats and abuse by RUC interrogators, either to their clients or directly to themselves. Rosemary Nelson became increasingly concerned about these threats, especially after one of her clients was told, “we’ll tell Billy Wright your solicitor’s address.” Following the murder of LVF leader Billy Wright in December 1997, threats against Rosemary Nelson were found among his handwritten notes.
Rosemary Nelson reported a spate of written and oral threats against her to friends and colleagues. These threats did not occur in a vacuum and in 1997 Dato’ Param Cumaraswamy, then the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, found evidence of “intimidation, hindrance and harassment of defence lawyers” by RUC officers that was “consistent and systematic.”
4. TAKING A HIGH PROFILE
In March 1997, Rosemary Nelson allowed the American Lawyers Alliance for Justice in Northern Ireland to make an official complaint on her behalf about the threats and abuse reported by her clients. This complaint was investigated by the RUC, under the supervision of the Independent Commission for Police Complaints. Rosemary Nelson also made complaints on her own behalf and recorded some of her clients’ reports of abuse against her, including abuse uttered by soldiers at checkpoints.
On 5th July that year she was assaulted by RUC officers while trying to represent her clients’ interests on the Garvaghy Road. Six weeks before she was killed, Rosemary Nelson issued a writ against the RUC for this assault. A loyalist convicted of another murder also has reportedly alleged that in mid-1997 two RUC officers urged him to kill Rosemary Nelson.
When Dato’ Param Cumaraswamy visited Northern Ireland in October 1997, she told him about her fears for her safety. Originally, the Special Rapporteur named her in his 1998 report, but after a disputed telephone call from the RUC he took her name out, highlighting her situation anonymously. He also wrote to the government privately expressing concern about her safety.
Human rights groups around the world repeatedly raised her case with the RUC and the government, to no avail. The abuse against her did not abate.
For example, on 3rd June 1998 a handwritten death threat was posted to Rosemary Nelson. She also received a number of telephoned death threats to her home and her office, and bullets were sent to her through the post.
In September 1998 she testified before the U.S. Congress’ House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights in Washington, concerning harassment and intimidation of defence lawyers and death threats against her by the RUC.
Less than three weeks before her death Rosemary Nelson showed Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch a handwritten death threat she had recently received. The next day, the Lawyers Alliance met the Chief Constable, to express their concern for her safety. Only three days before her death she gave an interview to the Irish News in which she talked of the death threats she had received, describing them as “so sinister”. The interview was published posthumously. In the weekend before her death, Rosemary Nelson revealed to a friend that two more telephoned death threats had been received at her office in the previous week.
Despite her fears for her own safety, Rosemary Nelson campaigned consistently for an inquiry into Patrick Finucane’s murder. On 12th February 1999 she addressed a meeting in Derry on behalf of the Pat Finucane Centre, marking the tenth anniversary of his murder. A month later she too was murdered.
5. THE FAILURE TO OFFER ROSEMARY NELSON PROTECTION
Numerous NGOs, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, had warned the RUC and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) of the serious threat to Rosemary Nelson’s safety. In light of these warnings and the fact that Patrick Finucane had been killed by loyalists ten years previously, the government should have done more to protect her.
The NIO requested only two threat assessments from the RUC relating to Rosemary Nelson and these assessments were not carried out properly nor acted on appropriately. The first assessment was made on 23rd February 1998, apparently based on the opinions of three RUC officers. These officers asserted that there were no reports, records or intelligence revealing an actual threat against Rosemary Nelson. This is a remarkable statement given the catalogue of threats received by Rosemary Nelson, the details of which were already in the possession of the RUC and the NIO.
The second threat assessment was requested on 6th August 1998. On 10th August 1998, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) wrote to government minister Adam Ingram MP including a copy of a handwritten death threat sent to Rosemary Nelson on 3rd June that year. They also enclosed a copy of a one-page pamphlet entitled “The Man Without a Future”, which referred to a Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition’s (GRRC) spokesperson. The pamphlet referred to his having received “advice from Lurgan solicitor and former bomber Rosemary Nelson” and quoted her business address and telephone number. The description of Rosemary Nelson as a “former bomber” was completely untrue. On 26th August, an official at the NIO wrote again to the RUC, referring to the request for a threat assessment and referring to the “Man without a Future” pamphlet and the threatening note, which she stated were enclosed. However, it seems that these documents were not received by the RUC, who were already in possession of the pamphlet but not of the note. In May 1999, after Rosemary Nelson’s death, the two documents mysteriously turned up in the police file, along with the letter of 26th August 1998.
On 24th September 1998, some six weeks after they wrote, Adam Ingram’s private secretary replied to CAJ, saying, “We passed the documents immediately to the Chief Constable’s office for investigation. They would obviously, given the nature of the material assess the security risk against Ms Nelson.” She also made some suggestions for Rosemary Nelson’s protection which were unrealistic at that time.
After her death it transpired that the RUC did not link the pamphlet with the letter, but carried out an incompetent investigation into each item separately. It seems that the second threat assessment was carried out by two RUC officers from Portadown and one from Special Branch, on the basis of the contents of the pamphlet alone. CAJ has complained to the Police Ombudsman about the failure to deal properly with the information they provided about the pamphlet and threatening note. They have also judicially reviewed the Police Ombudsman for failing to disclose documents to them arising out of their complaint. As at December 2004 they were still awaiting both judgement and the final decision on their complaint.
Rosemary Nelson permitted the GRRC to ask on her behalf that she be allowed to join the Key Persons Protection Scheme, although she had reservations about the RUC assessing her safety, since the threats against her were predominately emanating from RUC officers. However, protection was only offered for two elected local councillors who were GRRC members.
Even after she had been brutally murdered, the government maintained that the Key Persons Protection Scheme did not apply to Rosemary Nelson. It is, however, quite apparent from the government's own definition that it did. What is also apparent is that, although human rights groups and others were raising Rosemary Nelson’s safety with government ministers and senior officials, no-one in authority seemed to think it was his or her responsibility to proactively consider protection for her.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers met with the then RUC Chief Constable in the course of the preparation of his April 1998 report to the UN. The Special Rapporteur recalls comments made at that meeting by the Chief Constable about certain lawyers in Northern Ireland. When the Special Rapporteur sought to include some of these remarks in his report, the Chief Constable apparently insisted that they be removed.
In November 1998, BIRW drew attention to the campaign of abuse against Rosemary Nelson in a report about intimidation of defence lawyers sent to the UN. The then Chief Constable of the RUC, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, to whom we sent a copy of our report, responded as follows:
“I have received the documents forwarded with your letter of 5 November 1998. I suppose by now I really should have learned to expect, and not be surprised by, the total absence of balance in reports produced by your organisation. This latest report continues your now well established practice in that regard.”
This contemptuous response was made while the RUC was supposed to be carrying out its investigation into the death threat and the pamphlet sent to the Minister of State by CAJ.
On the day after Rosemary Nelson's murder, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam MP, gave a press conference in Washington. After paying tribute to Rosemary Nelson, she said that, as a result of concerns about Rosemary Nelson's safety raised with her by BIRW [she meant CAJ], a security assessment had been made of the risk to her safety and the risk had been found to be low. BIRW had never been told that such an assessment had ever been carried out, and what was more, neither had Rosemary Nelson. We have been refused sight of the assessment and BIRW have yet to be convinced that any assessment was in fact carried out. Even if it was, it is now, sadly, clear that it was completely wrong in its conclusions.
On 27th May 1999, the Chief Constable said in an RUC press release that “the RUC itself did not have any information to substantiate a threat to Mrs Nelson’s life before her murder”. He also said he “was not aware of any request made to the Prime Minister’s office for protection for her”. The minutes of the Police Authority of Northern Ireland’s meeting of April 1999, in which the Chief Constable of the RUC’s monthly report is included, recorded that, prior to her murder, the RUC did not have information to suggest that she was the subject of a specific terrorist threat. These claims of ignorance are totally lacking in credibility. Not only had the GRRC persistently raised Rosemary Nelson's safety with senior government officials, but government ministers had claimed repeatedly that they and the RUC were well aware of the danger she faced.
Ten days after Rosemary Nelson was killed, two RUC officers called in at the office of the Committee on the Administration of Justice. They wanted to know if CAJ had the originals of the threatening note and the abusive pamphlet they had sent to Adam Ingram, so that they could subject them to fingerprinting and DNA testing. Had they taken her situation seriously, they would have taken these measures in August 1998. It might have saved her life.
6. THE FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE ROSEMARY NELSON’S COMPLAINTS ADEQUATELY
On 23rd March 1997, the Independent Committee for Police Complaints passed the complaints they had received from the Lawyers Alliance for Justice to the RUC for investigation. The RUC initially refused to accept them as bona fide complaints. When an investigation was commenced, the RUC officer in charge took the view that many of the complaints concerning Rosemary Nelson were “more to do with generating propaganda against the RUC than establishing the truth…”
The member of the ICPC responsible for their investigation became increasingly critical of the way in which RUC officers acting under her supervision were dealing with the investigation. Her concerns were drawn to the attention of the Chief Constable and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by the ICPC Chairman. In July 1998, the Metropolitan Police were called in to take over the investigation under Commander Niall Mulvihill. On 30th March 1999, two weeks after the murder, a résumé of Mulvihill’s investigation was published. It concentrated on the RUC’s handling of the investigation, rather than on Rosemary Nelson’s substantive complaints.
In July 1999, a private report by the ICPC Chairman was leaked to the press. Written in April, it was heavily critical of Mulvihill’s part in the investigation. In particular, it criticised the fact that Mulvihill only conducted a review of the RUC’s handling of the investigation, rather than investigating the complaints from scratch. It also disapproved of the practice of allowing RUC officers who were under investigation to read other witness statements, presumably including Rosemary Nelson’s own statement, before being interviewed. The Chairman said that Mulvihill was too ready to accept the RUC’s classification of the abuse against Rosemary Nelson, some of which was sexually explicit, as “incivility”, and displayed insufficient concern over an RUC officer identifying the solicitor with a client “of bad character”. Mulvihill had failed to vindicate the ICPC’s complaints about the RUC handling of the investigation. The Chairman also disputed Mulvihill’s finding that “thorough” interviews were conducted with RUC officers alleged to have threatened Rosemary Nelson, most of whom declined to answer questions.
On 23rd December 1999 the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided no officer would be prosecuted as a result of the Mulvihill investigation, which covered two of the three files sent to the DPP. Rosemary Nelson’s other complaint, about the assault by RUC officers on the Garvaghy Road in July 1997, was taken over by the Police Ombudsman who concluded that the police investigation into the assault was properly carried out but had been hampered by the difficulty in identifying the RUC officers involved. The RUC decided that no officer should be made the subject of disciplinary proceedings and the DPP decided not to prosecute anyone.
Thus Rosemary Nelson’s complaints have never been properly investigated. If her complaints were well-founded, and all the evidence suggests that they were, then no RUC officer has been disciplined, let alone dismissed or prosecuted, for uttering death threats and other disgusting verbal abuse against her. If RUC officers were prepared to make such remarks to Rosemary Nelson’s own clients, they were probably even more ready to say such things to loyalists. These constant attempts to associate her with her clients’ alleged crimes and causes undoubtedly put her life at risk. There is no doubt in the minds of the human rights groups that took up her complaints while Rosemary Nelson was alive that such abuse helped to create the climate which brought about her death.
7. THE POLICE INVESTIGATION INTO THE MURDER
On the day of the murder, 15th March 1999, Detective Superintendent Sam Kinkaid was put in charge of the RUC investigation. The day after the murder, RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan announced that David Phillips, the Chief Constable of Kent, would be appointed to oversee the investigation. Sir Ronnie had also contacted the Director of the FBI for assistance.
Both NGOs and Rosemary Nelson’s husband Paul expressed concern that the murder investigation should be completely independent of the RUC, given that RUC officers had threatened her life. However, on 18th March 1999 David Phillips and John Guido, Legal Attaché to the FBI, issued a joint statement in which they said that, “…the best chance of detecting those responsible lies in the RUC conducting the investigation.”
David Phillips’ role has never been adequately clarified. He very rapidly faded out of the picture and on 6th April 1999 the Chief Constable appointed Colin Port, Deputy Chief Constable of Norfolk, as officer in overall command of the murder investigation.
On 12th April 1999, John Guido of the FBI indicated that their four-week involvement with the murder investigation was at an end. He said the FBI found little that they would have suggested the RUC change or do differently. It therefore seems that FBI participation in the investigation was wholly cosmetic.
Thus, three weeks after the murder, Colin Port inherited an investigation that had been commenced by the RUC, and which included a team considering the possibility of collusion made up of RUC officers. Had any of the RUC officers who threatened Rosemary Nelson’s life been involved in her death, they had had ample time to cover their tracks.
Although his terms of reference gave Colin Port unlimited resources and a great deal of autonomy, he was appointed by and reporting to the Chief Constable of the RUC. Any report he might produce would belong to the Chief Constable and would not be published. The Chief Constable did not confer on Colin Port the powers of a Northern Ireland police officer, which meant that he was not able to arrest anyone in Northern Ireland. When he wanted to bring someone in for questioning, he had to have an RUC escort who would carry out the arrest. This meant that in practice the details of every arrest he planned were made known to the RUC in advance. On at least one occasion Colin Port believed that a suspect had prior warning of a raid.
Nevertheless, Colin Port continued to include RUC officers in his investigation team, although he did not include any officer who had threatened Rosemary Nelson’s life, and he eventually excluded RUC officers from the team investigating possible collusion in her death. A number of press stories that appeared in 1999 and 2000 were damaging to Colin Port’s investigation and revealed details about the investigation that indicate a leak from within the police, possibly from senior RUC officers.
Although collusion has been one of the lines of inquiry pursued by Colin Port, he has not to the best of our knowledge interviewed any of the RUC officers who threatened Rosemary Nelson before her death about the threats, although some of them have been questioned about their movements at the time of the murder.
By June 2002, the police investigation had cost £7.8 million. The whole of this sum has come from the RUC/PSNI’s budget. Other police services have contributed at least a further £2 million in the form of salaries for seconded officers. Despite this expenditure, there is evidence that the investigation has failed to command public confidence, particularly within the nationalist community. Some important eyewitnesses refused to be interviewed by Colin Port’s team and had little or no response to his television appeal for witnesses to come forward.
In May 1999, the Pat Finucane Centre published a report on Rosemary Nelson’s murder that included extracts from interviews with 52 local eyewitnesses. Many of these witnesses gave consistent accounts of intense and highly unusual security force activity in the area around Rosemary Nelson’s house in the two or three months, and especially in the last 48 hours, before her death. In particular, local people reported that troops were being dropped off in a field near her house on the day before she was killed. They also reported helicopters hovering low over the area from around 6.30pm until midnight on the night before the murder, and an increase in RUC patrols throughout the weekend. Colin Port blamed the increased security activity in this period on a number of hoax devices that had been planted. However, prior saturation of an area by the security forces has been cited as a suspicious factor in other murders where collusion has been alleged.
In addition to exploring all aspects of this increased security force activity, the present Inquiry should also examine the movements of an intelligence officer with the Royal Irish Regiment of the British Army. On the day before Rosemary Nelson’s murder, this soldier was twice picked up and set down by two different helicopters in the area of her house. He was said to have been looking for mortar base plates. However, the second time he was set down was between 11:00 pm and 12:00am, when it would have been too dark for such a search. The video-tape taken from a camera on board the helicopter was eventually located but was found to have been taped over.
Colin Port has told us and other NGOs that he was not asked to produce a report on his investigation, and indeed no such requirement was contained in his terms of reference. This means that the only reports that he has produced are those he sent to the DPP on various individuals. In July 2003, Port’s replacement as head of the investigation, Arthur Parvoorst, told Rosemary Nelson’s family that the investigation was at an end. He also has not produced a report. Thus, there will be no holistic assessment of Rosemary Nelson’s murder, nor any satisfactory evaluation of the failure to act on warnings about her safety before she died, and it is incumbent upon the present Inquiry to remedy this omission.
BIRW’s concerns about the police investigation in the case can be summarised as follows:
¨ for the first two crucial weeks it was conducted entirely by the RUC, despite that fact that RUC officers had threatened Rosemary Nelson’s life;
¨ Colin Port’s investigation was not sufficiently independent of the RUC: he continued to employ RUC officers; he had no independent power of arrest; he was based in Lurgan RUC station; and he reported to the Chief Constable of the RUC;
¨ such independent scrutiny as there has been of the investigation has been purely cosmetic;
¨ there have been a number of leaks to the media about the investigation which have been harmful to the investigation, some of which appear to have come from senior RUC officers;
¨ there has been no effective investigation of those RUC officers who threatened Rosemary Nelson’s life;
¨ there has been no effective investigation of the failure to protect Rosemary Nelson despite many warnings about her safety;
¨ we believe that intelligence information held on Rosemary Nelson may have been withheld from Colin Port;
¨ the investigation has failed to command public confidence; and
¨ Colin Port did not produce a report of his investigation, but even if he had it would not have been published.
8. RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MURDER
The Red Hand Defenders (RHD) claimed responsibility for the murder in a telephone call to the BBC in Belfast. Senior RUC detectives believed it unlikely that the RHD could have carried out the murder without some help from elements previously connected with mainstream loyalists, as the murder was carried out by way of a sophisticated explosive device, almost certainly a mercury tilt switch detonator connected to Powergel (commercial) explosives.
Over time, it has become clear that Billy Wright’s LVF followers and their dissident UDA associates were responsible for Rosemary Nelson’s murder. In particular, Colin Port suspects that LVF leader Mark Fulton and his associates were involved.
One of the persons Colin Port suspects was a serving Royal Irish Regiment soldier at the time of the murder. He has links with the fascist racist group, Combat 18, and his movements on the day of the murder are unaccounted for after 6:13 am. In addition, some of those whom Colin Port suspects are, or have been, Special Branch informers.
Colin Port was given vital intelligence by the RUC about the murder when he first arrived in Northern Ireland. Colin Port decided that his only hope of success was to infiltrate the Red Hand Defenders, preferably outside Northern Ireland. Attempts to infiltrate a suspect in the USA failed, but a successful sting operation was established in England, where two suspects were taped making disclosures about crimes in which they had been involved. However, whenever any of the loyalists have been questioned about Rosemary Nelson’s murder, they have all given the same answer, “She was murdered by the British government.” Colin Port believes they have conspired to give this stock answer. They also referred to the murder as “the big one”.
One of the loyalists whom Colin Port interviewed in relation to the murder was originally charged with the murder of Robert Hamill.
We are concerned that Colin Port’s investigation may have been skewed from the outset towards apprehending the perpetrators of the murder rather than also looking into collusion.
9. ARRESTS ARISING OUT OF THE POLICE INVESTIGATION
As a result of Colin Port’s investigation, many of his suspects have been arrested and several of them have been charged with a variety of offences, none of them connected with the murder of Rosemary Nelson. Others were released without charge.
[REDACTED]
In December 2001 Mark Fulton was arrested in Portadown. On 5th December 2001, he was charged with the attempted murder of Rodney Jennett between 1st April and 11th May 2001. On 10th June 2002, he committed suicide in Maghaberry prison. Colin Port’s officers were prevented from observing the preliminary examination of his body and from attending the post mortem, even though the acting Chief Constable had authorised their presence.
10. THE NEED FOR AN EFFECTIVE INQUIRY INTO ROSEMARY NELSON’S DEATH
It is crucial that the present Inquiry provide an effective investigation into the murder of Rosemary Nelson, which is compliant with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life. The European Court of Human Rights has already laid out a set of principles on how a government should approach the investigation of such cases in accordance with Article 2. In the present case, it is for this Inquiry to ensure that they are finally applied, as the various investigations that have already taken place have fallen short in a number of ways.
11. CONCLUSION
Despite a very costly and lengthy police investigation into this case led by a senior officer from outside Northern Ireland, British Irish rights watch and others continue to have grave reservations about its independence and about the way it has tackled the possibility that collusion may have been involved in Rosemary Nelson’s murder.
We are also very concerned that the failure to protect Rosemary Nelson’s right to life has not been subjected to proper scrutiny. Had the government heeded the UN Special Rapporteur’s call for a public inquiry into the murder of Patrick Finucane and moved swiftly to put in place all his recommendations for safeguarding lawyers, Rosemary Nelson’s complaints would have been treated very differently, the warnings might have been taken seriously, and Rosemary Nelson might be alive today.
The complaints that Rosemary Nelson made about death threats and other abuse allegedly made against her by RUC officers and soldiers have yet to this day to be properly investigated.
It was not only the RUC who failed to protect Rosemary Nelson's life. The Northern Ireland Office and the government were also culpable, ignoring warnings and failing to put remedial measures in place.
The criminal justice system has not served Rosemary Nelson well, either before her death or afterwards. She was abused and threatened by RUC officers and others; she complained, but her complaints were neither taken seriously nor properly investigated; she was murdered, and her murderers have yet to be brought to book. If such a train of events had happened to one of her clients, she would have been up in arms. That it should happen to a solicitor, an Officer of the Court, despite her case having been raised with the government by the United Nations and numerous other individuals and organisations, is a scandal.
It is imperative that all the issues that have been raised in this report are properly examined and recommendations made and implemented to ensure that Rosemary Nelson is the last lawyer ever to be murdered in Northern Ireland and the last to have to carry out her professional duties in fear of her life.
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
