Britain's Anna Politkovskya?

Northern Irish human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was murdered in 1998. "Everybody knew Nelson's life was at risk long before a bomb exploded under her car," the Guardian wrote this weekend:

"She had had many death threats, but had been refused police protection. She was murdered a week before the publication of a report into allegations that police officers had told her clients she'd soon be dead."

Now, a fourth public inquiry reveals that the intelligence services lied to the previous three. Those inquiries, which cost millions of pounds, had all been told that no intelligence files exist on Nelson. But the latest investigation found that special branch, MI5 and the security service had in fact spied on her for years. Security reports on Nelson's private and public life "accelerated" between 1994 and 1998.

By that time, the Guardian recounts, "Nelson was already a hate figure as a result of her involvement in three cases," one of which involved "a Catholic kicked to death by loyalists while RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] officers watched".

Moreover, Nelson had by then lodged a number of formal complaints about police harassment. This made her unusual if not unique among the scores of lawyers in Northern Ireland who endured police harassment, opined Rory Phillips, counsel to the current inquiry. She took her case "to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the UN and the US, and encourag[ed] her clients to do the same."

On 10 July 1998, the IPCC concluded that that the RUC's own inquiry into its officers' alleged death threats against Nelson was unsatisfactory. Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, who - this new inquiry was told - had earlier described Nelson as an "immoral woman", was "incandescent" about the unprecedented rebuke.

In response, special branch had then Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam sanction a warrant to install a bugging device in Nelson's property, a breach of lawyer-client confidentiality if nothing else. "In a bullish testimony, the assistant chief constable, Chris Albiston claimed that Nelson fabricated IRA alibis, worked to a paramilitary agenda, and used her position to gather evidence about RUC officers." But as Phillips notes, the RUC "provided no evidence to all this." Bottom line: special branch was spying on Nelson even as it was accused of threatening her.

In a 2003 report, Peter Cory, a retired Canadian supreme court judge, already concluded "that there was prima facie evidence of collusion." But Corey didn't even know about the warrant or the intelligence file. This new inquiry for a while seemed to challenge the existing consensus that Nelson's killers involved "veteran mid-Ulster loyalists, including people who had been British agents and a serving member of the British army". Suddenly a new theory appeared, promoted by a high-level police source: maybe it was one of Nelson's own clients, a former IRA prisoner, who did it! But the new evidence about the role of the secret services and their subsequent cover-up of it squarely puts the suspicion back on them.

Was Rosemary Nelson the British Anna Politkovskya? The security services, the new inquiry shows, treated Nelson "as an enemy of the state rather than a citizen entitled to its protection". Soon after, she was dead.

Comments

[Corvus9]

And this was in Great Britain. In the late '90s. Jesus.

You know, I have been following the debates about the various violations of civil liberties, from torture to unwarranted searches and seizures to violation of habeas corpus and indefinite detention, where people have argued that such things are unprecedented and must be stopped now. But then you read stories like this one and think, you know, we never really had those rights in the first place. Governments have been doing this stuff all the time. All Bush did was be incompetent enough to let us in on it.

[Sir Charles]

The RUC is a terrorist organization. And the British government has all to often been complicit with it over the years.

[Sir Charles]

nimh,

Have you ever seen Ken Loach's "Hidden Agenda" with Frances McDormand? It reminds me a bit of this scenario and is based in part on the fact that MI5 was trying to bring down the Wilson government.

[nimh]

Corvus - yep. Too true.

Charles - no, haven't seen that film of his.. will look out for it!

[nimh]

Actually, considering her profession I guess Nelson was more Britain's Stanislav Markelov, but who remembers him?

[Corvus9]

Nimh, this isn't really directly related to the issue at hand, but do you have any idea what happened to Nelson's face. The article doesn't seem to mention it, nor her wikipedia file, but the left side looks like it's been pretty nastily disfigured. Did that have anything to do with her work, or was it unrelated, like from a childhood incident or something?

[nimh]

Corvus, I have no idea I'm afraid!