Finucane inquiry to consider whether MI5 propaganda 'legitimised' lawyer as target

An inquiry into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane will consider whether a security service propaganda campaign "legitimised" the lawyer as a target for loyalist paramilitaries.

The 39-year-old solicitor was shot dead at his home in north Belfast by the UDA in front of his wife and children in February 1989.

Several examinations of the case have found evidence of state collusion.

The third day of hearings in the inquiry, which formally opened in June, heard more information about the murder which is already in the public domain.

Alex Jamieson, a junior barrister, assisting the Counsel to the inquiry, said details of the MI5 propaganda campaign were first revealed in a review of the murder conducted by lawyer Sir Desmond De Silva in 2012.

He said the review recorded that it had seen evidence from the security service to the "effect that MI5 considered the Provisional IRA ran a dedicated propaganda unit".

Jamieson said that by the beginning of the 1980s there was "widespread consensus" both within the security service and the paramilitary organisations that the provisional IRA was winning the "information war".

The barrister said the review concluded a counter-propaganda campaign had been "deployed to 'contest and counter Republican propaganda' and most significantly 'came to include Patrick Finucane within its scope prior to his murder'".

Jamieson told the inquiry there had never been any evidence produced in any of the "many different investigations" that Pat Finucane had "been a member of the Provisional IRA or any other republican paramilitary organisation".

"If there is a persistence to such rumour and innuendo, despite that lack of evidence, the fact that the security service deployed a propaganda campaign to disseminate that information must be considered."

The barrister said the De Silva review amounted "to a finding of facts that prior to Patrick Finucane's murder by paramilitaries, MI5 had disseminated rumours and innuendo that had fanned existing false speculation that Patrick Finucane was a member of the IRA."

He added: "Those matters could, in Sir Desmond's words, have legitimised him as a target for loyalist paramilitaries."

The inquiry heard the De Silva review also concluded "the rumours linking Patrick Finucane to the IRA could not have been begun by MI5" as the security service had information suggesting the lawyer was being targeted by the UDA as early as 1981.

"De Silva concluded the 'dissemination of this propaganda could have served to further legitimise Patrick Finucane as a target for loyalist paramilitaries' and that this was a 'consequence that should have been foreseeable'," Jamieson said.

The barrister added "those conclusions about foreseeability and the effect that this propaganda was having to legitimise Mr Finucane as a target will have to be considered by this inquiry".

Pat Finucane was a well-known defence solicitor who frequently acted for high-profile IRA members.

He also represented loyalists.

In February 1989, he was shot 14 times by two gunmen at his family home in north Belfast.

His wife Geraldine was also wounded.

One of his sons is the Sinn Féin MP for Belfast North, John Finucane.

At an inquest into his death, police rejected claims that Pat Finucane was a member of the IRA.

In 2012, Sir Desmond de Silva's report into the murder found there was state agent involvement and that police had failed to act on threat intelligence concerning Mr Finucane.

The UK government announced the independent public inquiry in September 2024 following a decades-long campaign by the Finucane family.

The then Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said previous UK government commitments to establish an inquiry remained unfulfilled.

He said it was for this "exceptional reason" that an independent inquiry would be established under the Inquiries Act 2005.

In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that previous investigations into the murder had not met the procedural requirements of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The inquiry's terms of reference were published in March 2026, setting out its task of investigating the circumstances of Mr Finucane's death, particularly the role of the state.