Cameron’s just delivered the headline findings of the Finucane inquiry. Some of it is frankly, shocking. The details of the killing itself is less shocking (only because we’ve become so familiar) than some of the wider contextual information.
The thing that stunned me was the fact that 85% of the intelligence held by the UDA in the 1970s was sourced within the state and that de Silva is “satisfied that this proportion would have remained largely unchanged” by the time of Finucane’s murder.
It goes much further than “a wilful and abject failure by successive governments to provide a framework” for the running of agents. Dumping this material on a fractious, chaotic, nihilistic and murderous murder gang was shockingly irresponsible, even in the murderous days of the 1970s.
Patricia MacBride has a neat Tweet summary…
#Finucane 5 areas of collusion: Leaks to UDA, failure to act on threat intelligence, employees of state and 2 agents directly involved…
— Patricia MacBride (@patriciamacb) December 12, 2012
So, that’s just the start. We’ll link the report when it becomes available. But Geraldine Finucane is still pressing for a public inquiry. She notes that after a compliance check she says nothing came out, and yet de Silva has redacted some material.
She is pressing for the public inquiry Judy Cory called for. She would start from a higher level than any of the other subjects of those inquiries (lost files, etc). But Cameron is quite clearly saying, no more. I don’t see the Finucane family giving up anytime soon.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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