Blog
Published on November 20, 2024
by Brian Dooley
This week, the family of murdered Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane testified at hearings in the United States Congress about the independent inquiry into his killing promised to them by the new British government.
At the hearing, Geraldine Finucane was joined by her children Michael, Katherine and John, and she told the hearing how her husband was murdered in front of the family at their home in 1989. She paid tribute to Human Rights First and others who have supported the family for decades in their struggle for truth and accountability about what happened.
Human Rights First was invited to submit written testimony for the Lantos Commission hearing. It outlines the context of the murder and how the British State has failed the Finucanes and other families for many years in duly disclosing the extent of British State collusion in murders during the 1969-1998 Northern Ireland conflict.
Although the Finucanes have finally been promised an independent statutory inquiry into the murder, the terms of the inquiry aren’t yet fully clear — for example, if the inquiry will be presided over by one judge or (as is the family’s preference) a panel of judges, as was the case the Bloody Sunday Inquiry into the killings of 13 unarmed protestors by British soldiers in Derry in 1972.
“We want an inquiry to be independent from government and free to make its own determinations and recommendations….terms of reference are critical,” said John Finucane.
The murder of Pat Finucane is featured at length in the 200-page report titled Bitter Legacy: State Impunity in the Northern Ireland Conflict, released earlier this year. I was a co-author of this major piece of academic research written by a panel of international human rights experts convened by the Norwegian Center for Human Rights.
It traces the British government’s various inadequate reviews and inquiries to date, and the context of the Finucane family’s long struggle for the truth.
We concluded that the British government operated a “widespread, systematic, and systemic” practice of impunity protecting security forces from sanction during the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Many other families have faced similar challenges to the Finucanes in terms of obstruction and hostility from a series of British governments, and we have noted the damage done to the search for truth and accountability by the Legacy Act, which came into force in May 2024.
We join many others, including a broad range of local civil society actors and activists in Northern Ireland, in calling on the new British government to keep the promise it announced in its election manifesto to repeal the act.
Many families are waiting for inquests or other legal mechanisms to reveal why and how their loved ones were killed. We have stood with the Finucane family for over three decades in their campaign, and we will stick by them for as long as it takes for the full truth to be made public.
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