Gerry Adams calls on Irish government to release secret Finucane evidence

Says government must ‘shift into a higher gear’ in support of the Finucane family

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

30 Comments

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams speaking to the press outside Irish parliament

Photo by Google Images

Tweet

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams has asked the Irish government to release secret documents that will help the case for a public inquiry into the Pat Finucane murder. The government has said it ‘strongly disagrees’ with the British government's decision not to hold a public inquiry.

Adams said that the Irish government “needs to shift into a higher gear in support of the [Finucane] family”. Pat Finucane’s widow Geraldine called this week’s report into the February 1989 killing a ‘whitewash’.

Read More: The truth is Margaret Thatcher likely ordered the Pat Finucane murder

Lord Desmond da Silva found ‘shocking’ levels of state collusion but did not think a fully fledged conspiracy existed. Finucane, a human rights lawyer, was shot dead in front of his wife and children by Loyalist killers who shot him 14 times.

Three weeks earlier a British Minister had named him in the parliament because of his work defending IRA suspects.

Adams today asked Irish Prime Minister Kenny to begin an “intensive examination of all documents in the Department of the Taoiseach, Foreign Affairs and Justice relating to [Northern Ireland] and identify those which could assist the family in refuting the British government’s effort to frustrate [their] demand for a public inquiry.”

The Sinn Féin leader referred to a conversation between Prime Minister Charles Haughey and  Belfast lawyer PJ McGrory who had himself been warned about a plot against his own life, Finucane’s, and a lawyer named Oliver Kelly. Finucane was never informed of a threat to his life.

Read More Irish news stories here

Adams stated that McGrory told him that there was a serious threat to the three lawyers’ lives and that “they had raised this with the Department of the Taoiseach”. He said that McGrory was regularly told by clients who had been interrogated that there was “no use getting Finucane as he won’t be around for long.”

Adams said there “would have had to have been a level of political knowledge” in the British establishment about the threat to Finucane.

Print

E-mail

Tweet