Much ado about nothing - Editorial
Andersontown News, www.irelandclick.com
April 18, 2003
This week’s long-awaited publication of the report of the John Stevens’ Inquiry Mark 3 turned out to be much ado about nothing.
For all the hype which surrounded the unveiling of the report it was very disappointing. It was scant on detail, only 15 pages long, a poor return for the latest attempt by the head of the Met to get to the heart of the collusion between the RUC’s Special Branch, Military Intelligence and the loyalist death squads.
The effects of this collusion was devastating claiming 230 nationalist lives after the British agent and UDA man Brian Nelson rearmed the loyalist paramilitaries at the beginning of 1988.
John Stevens’ latest report once again poses more questions than answers. And he said that it will be at least another year to 18 months before he is in a position to tell us how high the collusion ladder reached into the British army, the intelligence services, the RUC and into the corridors of power at Whitehall.
John Stevens did admit formally for the first time in black and white that there was collusion between the FRU, the Special Branch and the loyalist killers of Pat Finucane and Tyrone student Adam Lambert. This admission by the most senior policeman in Britain is in itself an important breakthrough even if it is already known by the ordinary man and woman in the street.
However, despite the 4.1 tonnes of evidence amassed by the Stevens’ team, and we do admire their perseverance in the face of the obstruction, intimidation and the with-holding of evidence by the Special Branch and British army, there seems little immediate prospect if ever that the perpetrators of the state-sponsored murder campaign will ever see the inside of a court.
Meanwhile the families of the victims have long tired of the 14 years of stalling by the British government on their demand to know the truth.
The days of the slow breaking down of the iron curtain of silence and lies, which have surrounded these cases, are long over.
The pursuit of this investigation needs to move into the open in the form of a full, independent, international, judicial inquiry, exactly what the families have demanded from day one.