THE RUC and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) failed to take “reasonable and proportionate” steps to safeguard the life of murdered Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson, a long-awaited inquiry into her killing has found.
The 505-page report published yesterday is highly critical of the RUC and NIO, but found there was no evidence that either agency or the British army or MI5 actively colluded in her murder.
The £46.5 million (€53.4 million) report, which took six years to complete, highlighted a catalogue of failings by the RUC and the NIO in relation to the murder of Ms Nelson, who died after a bomb exploded under her car at her home in Lurgan in March 1999.
The murder of the 40-year-old solicitor was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for the Loyalist Volunteer Force. No one has been charged with her killing.
“We cannot exclude the possibility of a rogue member or members of the RUC or the [British] army in some way assisting the murderers to target Rosemary Nelson,” the three-member inquiry panel said in the report.
Northern Secretary Owen Paterson said he was “profoundly sorry” that state “omissions” meant that Ms Nelson was not properly protected, but he stressed there were no findings of collusion. “Those who are looking for evidence that the state conspired or planned the death of Rosemary Nelson will not find it in this report,” he said.
The Nelson family, however, said they felt vindicated in pressing for the inquiry. “We believe the secretary of state has seen fit to gloss over any findings in the report which he thought were particularly damning,” said Ms Nelson’s brother Eunan Magee.
In relation to the collusion allegation, Mr Magee added, “If it sounds like a duck and it walks like a duck, well, the chances are . . .”
The report, by Sir Michael Morland and Dame Valerie Strachan and Sir Anthony Burden, found some members of the RUC “publicly abused and assaulted” Ms Nelson on the Garvaghy Road in 1997, when she was acting for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition.
They added: “We believe there was some leakage of intelligence which we believe found its way outside the RUC. Whether the intelligence was correct or not, the leakage increased the danger to Rosemary Nelson’s life.”
The report found that “some members of the RUC made abusive and/or threatening remarks” about Ms Nelson to her clients that became publicly known and “would have had the subsequent effect of legitimising her as a target in the eyes of loyalist terrorists”.