Damian O'Loan (Paris): The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States may bring good news to the hunt for one of the most closely guarded secrets in the history of British involvement in the Northern Irish troubles. During the campaign, as noted here and elsewhere, the now President-elect pledged support for a comprehensive truth recovery process, in particular for a full, independent public judicial enquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, a lawyer shot dead in front of his wife and children at home in Belfast in 1989, by loyalist paramilitaries with the alleged collusion of British state agencies.
In responding to a questionnaire compiled by two Irish-American groups, Mr Obama said he would support an Inquiry under the terms recommended by Canadian judge Peter Cory in 2003, a report accepted by the Tony Blair under the Weston Park agreement of 2001. The government went on to delay proceedings before eventually hastily passing the Inquiries Act 2005 with no public consultation. That legislation, which replaced the 1921 Public Inquiries Act, allows ministers the power to deny truth recovery in several ways.
The Ministry can decide who runs the Inquiry and the scope of their remit; it decides whether it will be open or closed, who can be summoned to provide evidence and what, if anything, will be published. The Act may prove very useful to the government if its role in the 'war on terror' continues, but it clearly has its own secrets it wishes to keep.
The Finucanes rejected an offer of an Inquiry under these terms, and were supported by Judge Cory and by Lord Saville, who will deliver the further-postponed Bloody Sunday Inquiry. The questions of most concern are why should they claim that right to deny justice to the Finucanes; whether there may be a possibility that the allegations of the family, widely credited, will recur in some form; and whether the Obama support will help bring about much-needed amendments to the flawed 2005 Act, and contribute to full truth recovery in Northern Ireland.
The British government realise they have no right to withhold what they know of the murder, and any evidence related to the allegations of involvement by the FRU (Force Research Unit), Northern Ireland's Special Branch and the Security Services. That is why the agreed to do as Judge Cory requested, and assist the family as two successive US administrations have called for. The United States Congress last passed a resolution in 2006 calling for a public, judicial inquiry and amendment to the 2005 Act. The Act is of clear danger in light of calls for Inquiries into matters as serious as the Iraq war and the intelligence handling, or as mediatised as party fundraising arrangements. It serves the interest of a silence which would allow errors in the war against the IRA to be repeated in the war against Al-Qaeda. in turn placing the British people at unnecessary but fatal risk.
The Stormont Assembly is equally aware that it must be seen to support convictions for the bereaved and still grieving, but suspicions remain that there may be some in senior parliamentary positions who may have stories they would prefer not to be told. One DUP member was recently suspended from sittings for allegations made against Gerry Adams, who continues to deny ever having been an IRA member. Of course, republican paramilitaries were just as infiltrated as their loyalist counterparts.
Obama support comes, then, in a long line of esteemed campaigners for the Finucane plight and opponents of the Inquiries Act. The Congress motion called for an international Inquiry immediately, and later for amendments to the legislation. Those amendments may be as simple as creating a space for situations in which another framework is adopted, under a model closer to those internationally operated and the original 1921 Act.
Thus far the government has resisted the pressure, recently in the form of a star-studded New York gala dinner, featuring Mr Finucane's son as the keynote speaker. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the murder, and if Obama is true to his word, to the Finucane family, to all victims seeking truth, and on the future of torture and the war on terror, pressure will never have been greater for this obstacle to justice to be removed.
