Flanagan said lawyers had "terrorist agenda" Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... June 20 1999 Sunday Times Flanagan's 'said lawyers had terrorist agenda' by Liam Clarke A UNITED NATIONS official has accused Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the RUC chief constable, of saying that some lawyers in Northern Ireland work to a terrorist agenda. Dr Datum Cumaraswamy makes the claim in tomorrow's Panorama, which examines allegations of collusion between the British Army, the RUC and loyalist terror groups. The BBC television programme will say that Flanagan tried but failed to have Cumaraswamy's accusation deleted from a draft UN report. The issue is a contentious one because two lawyers, Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, have been killed by loyalist paramilitaries. Finucane's UFF killers claimed their victim was an IRA member. Panorama will feature an interview with Brian Gillen, a convicted IRA member and one of Finucane's clients, who says he was told by police that the lawyer would be killed. The programme also claims UFF suspects were told by their police interrogators that Finucane was in the IRA. Flanagan allegedly made his critical comments about lawyers during a meeting with Cumaraswamy, who is the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, at the RUC headquarters in Belfast in October 1997. Flanagan is alleged by Cumaraswamy to have said that some lawyers were "working for paramilitaries . . . there are those who are working for a military agenda". It is claimed that Flanagan said he had "more than a suspicion about this" and that there were "reams of documented evidence". In April, Cumaraswamy won a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague which means he cannot be sued for libel over any comments he makes in his position as a UN rapporteur. Last year he clashed with Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, the commissioner for holding centres, when their recollection of what had occurred at a meeting differed. It is alleged that when the chief constable saw the quotations in a draft report he phoned Cumaraswamy's office in Geneva to ask that they be deleted from the final report. In an interview for Panorama the chief constable says he has "no recollection" of any phone conversation with Cumaraswamy in Geneva concerning the allegations. He also categorically denies making the original comments. Panorama reveals that contemporaneous notes taken by Cumaraswamy's assistant support the claim that Flanagan made the allegations during the meeting. The programme claims that he telephoned Cumaraswamy's office on February 27 and followed it up with two letters. Flanagan allegedly asked the special rapporteur to withdraw the comments and said that publishing them could put Nelson's life at risk. The chief constable denies all this, but says in the Panorama interview that "if someone made those remarks with no basis whatever for saying them, I think that would be highly improper". Nelson began receiving death threats in 1997, following her work defending Colin Duffy, who the RUC believed to be an IRA murderer. An RUC inspector concluded that her allegations were a propaganda exercise against the force, because she was supported by human rights groups. The UN says that it has received numerous allegations of abuse by RUC officers. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-06.23.99-16:54:42-27681