Sir
In 1989, an international team of lawyers assembled by Liberty visited Belfast following Pat Finucane's murder. They found that emergency legislation, breaching human rights standards, had created "a system of criminal justice weighted significantly against the accused". Defence lawyers were the subject of open official distrust (and alleged RUC smears), were wrongly associated by police and press with the politics of their clients, and were vulnerable to intimidation and attack.

They also found "convincing evidence of [British authorities'] unlawful 'dirty tricks'"; and called for investigation of the links between those running undercover operations and those who briefed Home Office minister Douglas Hogg to claim in Parliament "as a fact" that there were "in the Province a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA". They had no doubt this statement contributed powerfully to the climate in which Pat Finucane was murdered just weeks later.

The Liberty team concluded that a full, public judicial inquiry should investigate "evidence of collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and members of the security forces in Northern Ireland".

Fourteen years on, Sir John Stevens' team have produced a damning report on this collusion. Pat Finucane's relatives, understandably, still wonder why there was no open judicial inquiry. Concerns that in 1989 were dismissed by the authorities and others as incredible have proved all too real; but without the extraordinary diligence of Sir John's team, these facts might again have been covered up. That's both a tribute to the Stevens inquiry and also a reminder of the vulnerabilities of internal investigation.

Serious abuses of power should always be openly, independently investigated. The dangers - to public confidence in the authorities and even, as Pat Finucane's death tragically showed, to people's safety - without such investigation must not be ignored.

yours
John Wadham
Director
Liberty