A solicitor from Lurgan, Co Armagh, has arrived in New York to inform UN officials, US politicians and media about death threats to, and intimidation of, lawyers in Northern Ireland.
Ms Rosemary Nelson is helping to publicise the recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur, Mr Param Cumaraswamy, in which the RUC is accused of such intimidation. She has been invited to the US by the Irish-American Labour Coalition.
Ms Nelson told The Irish Times that the report accurately deals with incidents of death threats and intimidation against herself, involving the RUC. She said that as recently as two weeks ago, before the publication of the report, a detective at Castlereagh holding centre made derogatory remarks about her to one of her clients during an interrogation.
She advised the client to make a formal complaint and when he was released he was told by the detective: "Tell Rosemary we've been doing this for the past 30 f...ing years. We'll do it for another 30 and she won't stop us."
Ms Nelson has lodged numerous complaints about RUC threats and intimidation.
Mr Chris Smith, chairman of the human rights subcommittee of the US House of Representatives, has described the UN report as "devastating and regrettably accurate". Mr Smith, who has visited Northern Ireland, said he "found the RUC to be an agency in denial about the abuses it visits upon attorneys and the citizens it is supposed to protect."
Americans For a New Irish Agenda, welcoming the report, says: "The continual interference by the RUC with the administration of justice, culminating in death threats against solicitors representing nationalist defendants, is further evidence of the hostility of that body to the nationalist population."