Pat Finucane’s family has organized a conference to explore his life and legacy and the circumstances surrounding his death.  This conference will be held on February 12-14, 2009 at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.  Click here for more information about the Conference >>

The Brehon Law Society is asking the legal community in America to support this conference in one of the following ways:

 1. Financially:

• Attend a cocktail reception on January 15, 2009 at Harbor Lights restaurant, located at South Street Seaport in Manhattan, New York.
   

• Send a donation to the Brehon Law Society.  Proceeds to defray costs of conference.

 2.  Attend the Pat Finucane Conference.  For further information contact:

• Jane Winters  - winterJ@birw.org

• Sean Downes - sjd_esq@hotmail.com  or (212) 248-3232

3.  Spread the word of this conference to colleagues and friends and send messages of support for an independent public inquiry into Pat’s murder. For further information contact Jane Winters or Sean Downes.

ABOUT Pat Finucane:

The Brehon Law Society is an organization comprised mostly of Irish American attorneys who are interested in civil and human rights in Ireland.  For the past thirty years this organization has taken an active role in promoting peace with justice in our ancestral homeland.

I am writing to you today concerning our colleague, friend and mentor, Pat Finucane.  Pat was a lawyer who was gunned down in his house in Belfast over twenty years ago, on February 12, 1989.  At the time of his death he was only 39 years old yet had achieved a reputation as a skilled and courageous litigator who used the law to challenge the institutions in his country, which had served to deny the Nationalist population equality and civil rights.  He represented clients that many other attorneys were afraid to represent because of growing intimidation and threats directed against lawyers by government agents.  While most of Pat’s clients were nationalists, he also represented loyalists whose political beliefs would have been opposed to his.  It is clear that Pat’s courage and effectiveness as an advocate for justice led to his murder.  Only a few weeks before Pat’s death, Douglas Hogg, a junior minister in the Thatcher government, used parliamentary privilege in the British House of Commons to denounce him by name as a solicitor who, he claimed, was “sympathetic” to the IRA.

The UDA, the largest loyalist paramilitary group, claimed direct responsibility for Pat’s murder.  History has shown that this group had been infiltrated and utilized by British military intelligence to carry out covert actions throughout the “troubles”.  It is widely believed that Pat’s death was a carefully orchestrated effort on behalf of British military intelligence and loyalist death squads. Indeed numerous investigations and inquiries all point to this assassination as being directed from the top echelons of the British military and political establishment.

Since Pat’s death, his family, colleagues and lawyers in human rights groups throughout the world have been campaigning for an independent public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his murder.  Despite promises and assurances by both the British and Irish government this inquiry has not been held.