Pat Finucane murder linked to MI5’s ‘licence to kill

Posted by Jim on October 6, 2018

MI5 authorised its agents and informers to kill targets and commit other
crimes under a secret policy which operated throughout the conflict in
Ireland and continued until at least 2012, an investigative powers
tribunal in London has heard.

The policy, known as the ‘Third Direction’, has no legal basis and its
existence has been secret until now.

In November 2012, former British Prime Minister David Cameron asked for
the policy to be reviewed, but with an extraordinary impunity clause
regarding any potential prosecutions.

Writing to Mark Waller, the ‘Intelligence Services Commissioner’ who had
the job of oversight of MI5’s use of agents, Cameron wrote: “For the
avoidance of doubt, I should be clear that such oversight would not
provide endorsement of the legality of the policy; you would not be
asked to provide a view on whether any particular case should be
referred to the prosecuting authorities; and your oversight would not
relate to any future consideration given by prosecuting authorities to
authorisations, should that happen.”

The letter was sent two weeks before the publication of an independent
report into the 1989 murder of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane as
Cameron prepared to issue an admission that British state collusion was
involved in his murder.

The Pat Finucane Centre, a human rights campaign body named after him,
is among the claimants asking a judicial tribunal to order MI5 to
release information abou the legality of the ‘Third Direction’ policy.

In their submission, they cited Pat Finucane’s murder as an illustration
of the “considerable public importance” of the issues raised. It also
refers to allegations that Freddie Scappaticci was a former senior
member of the IRA and a murderous double agent working under the
codename Stakeknife.

MI5 has refused to answer questions on the policy, which allowed them to
engage in “murder, torture, sexual assault or other grave criminality”
in the name of the British national interest, the PFC said.

The revelations are a damning indictment of the British state’s
involvement in the conflict here, according to Sinn Fein’s Linda Dillon.

“It was only in 2012 on the eve of the Da Silva report exposing the role
of agents in Pat Finucane’s murder that the then British Prime Minister
David Cameron belatedly produced new and frankly inadequate guidelines
for oversight of intelligence agencies,” she said.