UDA spy's death sparks fresh call for public inquiry

Army double agent linked to Finucane murder dies of cancer
Campaigners yesterday intensified calls for a public inquiry into the murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, following the death of Brian Nelson, the army double agent said to have set him up, just days before a new police report on the case.

The cancer-stricken former soldier, who died of a massive brain haemorrhage on Friday, has been linked to more than 30 murders and was a key figure in Metropolitan police commissioner Sir John Stevens' investigation into alleged security force collusion with Finucane's loyalist killers.

When questioned by the Stevens team several times in the past few years Nelson maintained his army handlers knew the paramilitaries had asked him to compile information about the lawyer.

Sir John will publish a summary of his report on Thursday, when he gives the full 3,000 pages of findings to Hugh Orde, Northern Ireland's chief constable. The Guardian understands the Metropolitan police chief uncovered a widespread network of cooperation between terrorists, RUC special branch and military intelligence's undercover force research unit (FRU).

He has also forwarded files on more than 20 retired and serving police officers and soldiers, including Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the former head of FRU who is now military attache in Beijing, to the director of public prosecutions, and some could face serious charges.

But the Finucane family and supporters, including Sinn Fein, think the lawyer's murder was part of a high-level conspiracy and have no faith in Sir John. They feel Nelson's death denies them the chance to see him publicly cross-examined but strengthens the need for an independent inquiry before other vital witnesses are lost.


"But his death highlights the urgent need for a public inquiry. All the indications are that very little of Sir John's report will be made public. My father's murder raises questions way above bringing charges against individual army or police officers, which can only be answered by an independent tribunal."


Nelson, from Belfast's Shankill Road, left the Black Watch regiment in the mid-1970s and FRU recruited him as a spy in 1987, when he infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association, the loyalist paramilitary group that murdered Finucane.

As UDA chief intelligence officer, he compiled dossiers on targets for assassination, including information that led the group to Finucane, who was shot dead in front of his family as they ate dinner in February 1989.

Nelson was alleged to have scouted Finucane's house with his army handler a few weeks earlier and to have passed on a photograph and shown his house to Ken Barrett, who admitted in a television documentary that he was one of the two gunmen who shot the solicitor.

Nelson's role as a double agent was exposed in 1990 and he was jailed for 10 years on five counts of conspiracy to murder, unrelated to Finucane's death. Brigadier Kerr testified at his 1992 trial, claiming he had saved many lives by informing FRU of 730 threats to 217 people.

Among the murder bids he was credited with thwarting was an attempt on the life of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president.