Pat was a human rights soliciter from Belfast who was gunned down 12 February 1989 in front of his wife and children by the pro-British UDA. He was perceived as enemy by loyalists because he had successfully challenged the British Government over several important human rights cases. It has since come to light that one of those involved in his murder was the notorious double agent Brian Nelson.
Headline: RUC Held Back Finucane Murder Confession to Protect Informants
Source: Sunday Times
Issue Date: Sunday October 15, 2000 The RUC got a detailed verbal confession to the murder of Pat Finucane, a Belfast solicitor, two years after his death but the force's special branch prevented detectives from launching a prosecution in order to protect key informants, The Sunday Times has learned.
The confession was given in 1991 to two detectives, who are now co-operating with Sir John Stevens' inquiry into collusion between loyalists and the security forces.
One of the CID officers who is co-operating with Stevens is Sergeant Johnston Brown, a hate figure among loyalist terrorists whose home was damaged in a bomb attack by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) last week.
Brown was responsible for the original imprisonment of Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair.
The confession to the February 1989 murder of Finucane is alleged to have been made by a terrorist to three police officers whose support he wanted to enlist. A Special Branch constable decided that the confession could not be acted on.
This decision was appealed by Brown and considered at the highest level of Special Branch. A murder investigation at that time would have exposed the role of Brian Nelson, the army's highest-ranking mole within the UFF, who had given Finucane's killer details of the Catholic solicitor's movements and his photograph. An investigation would also have endangered other police agents.
Stevens' inquiry has already uncovered a web of deceit involving the Force Research Unit (FRU), an undercover army unit which ran agents within loyalist and republican paramilitaries. Nelson, an FRU agent later jailed for conspiracy to commit murder, was acting as the head of intelligence for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in Belfast.
He gave the organisation' s entire intelligence files, in effect its death lists, to the FRU, who helped him collate the material on computer discs, made copies, and then returned it to the UDA.
The idea was to prevent UDA murders, but a number went ahead, including that of Finucane.
There have also been claims that Nelson was used to stop the UDA killing a top FRU agent within the IRA, known by the code name Steak Knife. One of Nelson's handlers, who now works in the army's secret intelligence wing headquarters at Chicksands, is said to have substituted the name of Francisco Notarantonio for Steak Knife's in order to save the agent.
Notarantonio, a pensioner with no IRA involvement since the 1940s, was murdered in his home in October 1987. His family have said that the killers dropped a British Army map showing the route to his home.
Commander Hugh Orde of the Metropolitan police, who heads the Stevens inquiry on a day-to-day basis, said last night that he had not recovered material to substantiate a link between Steak Knife and Notarantonio' s murder but was continuing to investigate "all elements of the killing which relate to collusion".
Orde wants to reinterview a former FRU soldier about the Steak Knife affair. The soldier has been accused by the Ministry of Defence of being Martin Ingram, the source of a number of articles in The Sunday Times about FRU dirty tricks.
Brown's allegations to the Stevens inquiry will add weight to the suspicion that murders were allowed to go ahead, or went uninvestigated, when they might have jeopardised the role of important agents, such as Nelson and Steak Knife.
Last night Brown said: "I can confirm that my journals have been seized by the Stevens inquiry and that I am co-operating with them. I cannot comment further on an ongoing investigation. "
