Behaviour of RUC comes under scrutiny following murder of Rosemary Nelson

John Stalker, in his book about his inquiry into allegations of an official RUC shoot-to-kill policy in the early 1980s, recalled leaving a group of police officers to speak to solicitor Pat Finucane in Crumlin courthouse, Belfast.

When he returned to the police group, one of the officers reprimanded Stalker, stating that Mr Finucane represented republicans and was as good as an IRA man himself. In the book, Stalker expressed astonishment that the officer could not make the distinction between the lawyer and the crimes his clients allegedly committed.

The complaint then, as it is today, was of an ingrained culture of RUC antagonism, and worse, to solicitors who represent high-profile republican defendants. "One of the main problems is that the RUC identify the lawyer with the lawyer's clients and the lawyer's cases," said Mr Paul Mageean, of the Belfast-based human-rights body the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ).

Ten years ago, Mr Finucane was murdered by the UDA in controversial circumstances, triggering allegations of RUC intimidation and collusion. The parallels with last Monday's loyalist murder of Rosemary Nelson were obvious in the extreme, said Mr Finucane's friend, Mr Peter Madden, of solicitors Madden and Finucane.

"Rosemary Nelson made numerous complaints about RUC death threats against her, and it was exactly the same situation with Pat Finucane. The RUC threatened them, and then loyalists came and killed them. Now that makes you ask questions, doesn't it?" he said yesterday.

It was a tragic week for the Nelsons and for many nationalists living in the sectarian cauldron of Lurgan and Portadown. Paul Nelson and his three young children lost a wife and a mother; the nationalist community lost a very effective legal advocate. It was also a disastrous week for the RUC, with one damaging incident being heaped upon another, and this coming at a time when the Patten Commission must decide on the force's future. It was a week in which republicans were busily freshening their "Disband the RUC" graffiti.

Yesterday should have been a day of great celebration for the force. The RUC, after "one of the largest and most complex investigations", had seen the conviction of IRA members implicated in murders in south Armagh. Yet the continuing bad publicity from the Rosemary Nelson murder was undermining that success. One could imagine the RUC chief constable sitting behind his desk, clutching his face in his two hands and sighing in despair at the public relations fiasco his force endured over five fraught and difficult days. Not only is there continuing fallout from the murder of Ms Nelson, but TV viewers were treated over Wednesday night and Thursday to broadcasts of Garvaghy spokesman Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, with blood streaming down his eye after he was struck by a police officer.

The RUC commander in the area, Tom Craig, will be well aware that local nationalists won't buy the excuse that Mr Mac Cionnaith was accidentally struck during disturbances on St Patrick's night. He acknowledged that Mr Mac Cionnaith was trying to calm the situation when he was struck. Said one observer generally sympathetic to the police: "Couldn't they have found some one else to hit?"

There were attempts at damage limitation. Mr Craig was quick to state that the officer who hit Mr Mac Cionnaith had owned up and said he struck him accidentally. Police sources were also at pains to point out that while there were many complaints of death threats against Ms Nelson, these were mostly made by republicans in custody.

"Surely, it must be taken into account that these republican suspects might be working to a particular agenda," said one senior officer. "You will always have the occasional officer breaking the rules, but I think the vast majority do recognise that defence lawyers have to do a professional job," he added.

Still, the evidence is stacking up of deep antipathy among elements in the RUC to Ms Nelson. This seems to be because she was involved in such high-profile cases as defending Lurgan republican Mr Colin Duffy, who, with her help, succeeded in an appeal against a conviction for murdering a UDR soldier in 1993 and subsequently had the charges of murdering constables John Graham and David Johnson in 1997 dropped.

Her role in pursuing the RUC for allegedly failing to protect Portadown Catholic Mr Robert Hamill as he was beaten to death by a loyalist mob, and her work on behalf of Mr Mac Cionnaith and the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, may also have annoyed some in the force.

There is no doubting that while Ms Nelson had loyalist clients, she was very unpopular among many loyalists. In some cases, just like Mr Finucane, she was perceived as an "IRA lawyer", and that view may have translated from the unionist and loyalist community, from which the police are chiefly recruited, into elements of the police itself.

And the evidence doesn't simply relate to republicans in custody claiming death threats were issued against Ms Nelson. The lawyer herself spoke directly of being allegedly assaulted, intimidated and quite foully verbally abused by police officers during the Drumcree trouble of 1997.

THE CAJ, a respected human rights organisation, viewed her as a credible complainant, as did the UN special investigator, Mr Param Curamaswamy. Mr Mageean of the CAJ said that even shortly before her murder she had complained to his organisation of continuing RUC harassment.

What was further damning was the admission this week by the Independent Commission for Police Complaints (ICPC) that it was so seriously concerned with the police handling of the death threat allegations that it took the unprecedented step of notifying the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, of its worries.

The point here was, if the allegations from republican suspects in custody were so suspect and groundless, as some senior officers suggested, surely the RUC could have undertaken its original inquiry with greater rigour and thoroughness to establish that point? Instead, the case was taken from the RUC, at the decision of Sir Ronnie Flanagan, and handed to London Metropolitan Police commander Niall Mulvihill. His investigation is now completed, but we will only know its findings if the DPP feels it justifies a case being taken against police officers, and only if those findings are then subsequently presented in court.

According to the ICPC, 15 solicitors made 36 complaints last year against the RUC. According to Mr Madden, of Madden and Finucane solicitors, this did not represent the true extent of the alleged RUC intimidation of solicitors representing nationalists and republicans.

Mr Madden said he and colleagues in his firm were regularly subjected to police intimidation, but that because he had no confidence in either the RUC or the ICPC to respectively investigate and supervise such complaints, he instead notified the British-Irish Rights Watch of the allegations. Ms Jane Winter, of the London-based group, said she had a dossier of such complaints over recent years. "I believe there is an environment within the RUC that does not respect the role of defence lawyers, and does not see them as professionals who have a job to make the criminal justice system work."

Mr Cumaraswamy, in his report last year, found that the RUC had engaged in "activities which constitute intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference of lawyers". Among many proposals, he said that as a matter of urgency the RUC should organise seminars for police officers to "sensitise them on the important role that defence lawyers play in the administration of justice".

"It's time the RUC followed that advice," said Mr Mageean of the CAJ yesterday.