LONDON (AP) — The British government said Wednesday it will hold a public inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane, a lawyer whose 1989 slaying raised questions of collusion between U.K. security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
Finucane, who had acted for Irish Republican Army suspects, was shot dead in his Belfast home by the Ulster Defense Association, a banned Protestant militia. His death is one of the highest profile killings of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles,” three decades of violence in which more than 3,500 people died.
A series of investigations concluded there was British state collusion in the murder, and his widow and children have campaigned for decades for an independent public inquiry to establish the extent of security force involvement.
Successive British governments declined to hold an inquiry, despite pledging to do so. In a change of stance, the center-left Labour Party government elected in July said Wednesday it would appoint a chair for an inquiry “as soon as possible.”
“The plain fact is that two decades on, the commitment made by the government … to establish an inquiry into the death of Mr. Finucane remains unfulfilled,” Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said.
“It is for this exceptional reason that I have decided to establish an independent inquiry into the death of Patrick Finucane,” Benn told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
The victim’s son John Finucane, a lawmaker for Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, welcomed the inquiry, writing on social network X: “After 35 years of cover-ups, it is now time for truth.”
The findings are liable to be uncomfortable for the U.K. government. Several probes over the years have amassed mounting evidence that the British army and police planted agents and recruited informers within Northern Ireland paramilitary groups, and that some committed serious crimes while working for the state.
The 1998 Good Friday peace accord largely ended the violence in Northern Ireland. But a quarter century on, the wounds are still raw for those who lost loved ones at the hands of Irish republican and British loyalist militias and U.K. troops.
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