Northern Ireland Office ‘should have protected’ murdered solicitor

The murdered solicitor Rosemary Nelson should have been offered protection by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), a senior official accepted, according to newly released documents.

Nelson was killed by a loyalist car bomb outside her home in Lurgan, County Armagh in March 1999.

The 40-year-old rose to prominence after taking on a number of high-profile clients, including suspected republican terrorists as well as the family of a Catholic man murdered by a loyalist mob, and a nationalist residents’ group opposing Orange Order parades in the infamous Drumcree standoff.

By the mid-1990s Nelson, who had three children, alleged security force intimidation and reported receiving death threats from loyalists. Her claims that Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were threatening her while interviewing her clients echoed the experience of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, who was shot by loyalists in 1989.

Shortly before her killing, the NIO offered protection to two of her clients, the Portadown councillors Breandán Mac Cionnaith and Joe Duffy, who were campaigning against Orange Order demands to march on Garvaghy Road. However, the NIO decided not to offer the same to Nelson.

The NIO’s most senior official, Joe Pilling, later accepted in conversation with Irish diplomats that “with the benefit of hindsight the NIO ought perhaps to have actively sought her out on this”, according to newly unsealed reports of the conversation from the Irish National Archives.

However, he suspected that she would not have welcomed an RUC security offer, though he said he would have liked lighting to be installed that would have illuminated “the entire front of the house and would also have detected any interference with her vehicle”.

The RUC’s chief constable, Ronnie Flanagan, believed the bombing had to have been carried out “in some form” by members of the Ulster Defence Association because it was “too sophisticated” for Lurgan Red Hand commandos.

“He believes that UDA dissidents who are unhappy with the ceasefire may either have defected to the RHD [Red Hand Defenders] or supplied material and expertise on an unauthorised basis,” according to an Irish government note.

One of Nelson’s clients, Gary Marshall, claimed that he had been told during interrogation by the RUC at Castlereagh “that Rosemary works for the IRA and takes her orders from them”.

Days before she was killed, Nelson, fearful about her safety, contacted the department of foreign affairs. An official noted: “She is very worried and asked if it would be possible to meet with the minister to discuss her case.”

Before her death, the chief constable was unhappy that a UN special rapporteur’s report claimed that Flanagan believed “that solicitors may in fact be working for paramilitaries”, though no supporting evidence was given.

Unhappy the words were attributed to him, he sought their removal, saying that “if the comments were kept in the report there may be a danger to life of Rosemary Nelson from loyalist paramilitaries”.

“As a result of this, the special rapporteur’s office is proposing to delete the names of the solicitors from the report. Ms Nelson considers this to be a meaningless exercise as everybody will know the solicitors the report refers to,” the Irish government document states.

A public inquiry into Nelson’s death found no direct security force role in her murder.

The newly released papers also show that the top British soldier in Northern Ireland accused Tony Blair’s government of a “cynical political move” for establishing a new inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday.

In 1998, Blair established the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry, following campaigns from the victims of the 1972 shootings on the streets of Londonderry.

An inquiry led by the lord chief justice, Lord Widgery, shortly after the shootings had supported the soldiers’ version of events that they were returning fire.

Blair’s announcement was not well received by the commander of British troops in Northern Ireland, Gen Sir Rupert Smith, who was invited to dinner with Irish officials in the Anglo-Irish secretariat in Belfast in June 1998.

The officials recorded that Smith expressed his “trenchant opposition” to what he called a “cynical political move” designed to scapegoat soldiers “yet again”.

He implied that the soldiers involved had been placed in an impossible position on the orders of politicians, and insisted “with some passion” that the Widgery report had “got it about right”.

The officials note he later accepted that a new inquiry was part of the price to be paid for a comprehensive settlement.

A year later, the inquiry was a bone of contention when the secretariat hosted Smith’s successor, Gen Sir Hew Pike, who said the army would resist efforts to have the anonymity of the soldiers involved lifted.

The records also reveal that Blair attempted to amend a Gerry Adams statement on IRA disarmament in 2003.

It came after Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, and Blair issued a joint statement in early April 2003 in which they said all parties had a collective responsibility to fulfil the promise of the Good Friday agreement.

That was met by a communique from the Provisional IRA to the two governments, which provoked some unease. Further clarity on the statement was sought from the IRA.

Newly unsealed documents reveal a back-and-forth involving Adams, the Irish government’s department of affairs, and the British government around a draft statement for the Sinn Féin leader for more than a week. Blair ultimately publicly requested that the IRA answer the “three questions” the governments had about the IRA statement on 23 April.

Adams, as president of Sinn Féin, later addressed these questions in a speech on 27 April 2003.