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Pat Finucane: justice denied?

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21 January 2021 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7917 / Categories: Features , Criminal
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Jon Robins questions the government’s decision to rule out a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Pat Finucane

If ever there was an ‘activist lawyer’ (to use a 2020 neologism) it was Pat Finucane. At the end of last year Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis ruled out a public inquiry into state collusion in the murder of the human rights solicitor in 1989.

Born into a republican family from the Falls Road in Belfast, Pat Finucane was fully committed to the idea that everyone in his divided community deserved proper independent legal representation. The solicitor was as comfortable representing loyalist rioters hit by stray plastic bullets as their republican adversaries. As his widow, Geraldine, once put it: ‘Pat would have represented the people who shot him.’

Pat Finucane was shot 14 times in front of his wife and three children by loyalist gunmen who forced their way into his home. ‘One of the first times I saw my Dad on telly, he was being interviewed on the Six

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