"Army helped terrorists commit murder"

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Police and Army officers conspired to murder republicans in Northern Ireland over 10 years, the longest-running criminal inquiry in UK history will conclude this week.

The report by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens will reveal that a secret army intelligence unit and members of the RUC Special Branch assisted loyalist hitmen to assassinate republicans during the Eighties. It will make more than 20 recommendations to improve the accountability of the police and Army.

However, there is growing criticism that only a tiny minority of his findings will be made public when the report is unveiled on Thursday. Human rights campaigners in Belfast say only 15 pages of the 3,000-page report will be included in the public document.

Paul Mageean, of the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Human Rights, said: "This is an absolute scandal - £4 million has been spent on this inquiry and after four years to get so little is unacceptable. This is no better than Stevens' first report, which we never got to see."

Sir John's report spans three separate inquiries in the past 14 years. His findings will be presented to Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde, who once led the inquiry and has already made changes to the Special Branch procedures.

The inquiry focused on claims that loyalist terrorists involved in a wave of sectarian murders, including that of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989, were aided by police and military intelligence.

Files on more than 20 civilians, soldiers and police officers - both serving and retired - have been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Sources close to the inquiry say the public report, still being worked on last night, will be "short but robust". Restrictions have been placed on details surrounding some individuals identified in the main report because of pending criminal prosecutions. The report singles out the Army's ultra-secret Force Research Unit ( FRU), then headed by Brigadier Gordon Kerr, currently British military attaché ©n Beijing.

He was interviewed under criminal caution by inquiry detectives, and his name is believed to be one of those passed to the DPP.

The FRU ran double agents such as Brian Nelson, who died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage last week. Nelson has been linked to more than 30 murders, including that of Finucane. A former soldier from Belfast's Shankill Road area, he was recruited by Brigadier Kerr while in the Ulster Defence Association as part of a plan to stop the loyalist terror group shooting ordinary Catholics and concentrate on known republicans.

Nelson was the UDA's intelligence officer, providing gunmen with information on targets. He was also supposed to tell his Army handlers but did not always do so. He claimed that, when he did, they did not always warn the intended victim. He also said his security force bosses knew the UDA asked him to compile information on Finucane.

Nelson's role as an Army agent was discovered in 1990 and he was jailed for 10 years on five counts of conspiracy to murder. He pleaded guilty so that allegations of security force collusion were not aired in court. When he was released he was spirited away to England and given a new identity. This week's report is expected to say that Finucane's murder-could have been prevented, and that his killers could have been brought to justice.

It will call for greater accountability of the Special Branch and undercover Army activities in Northern Ireland, and it will criticise the police's failure to keep proper records of activities and informants.

Senior Met detectives were seconded to the inquiry amid great secrecy and interviewed people ranging from senior military figures to loyalist gunmen. At one stage Sir John's HQ in Northern Ireland - in a supposedly secure building - was burnt down. He is convinced it was arson, an effort to get him and his team to leave Northern Ireland.

 

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