Army 'helped loyalists to target the IRA'

Official report into Finucane case accuses British intelligence of using assassination to remove 'undesirables'

The British intelligence community in Northern Ireland will next week stand officially accused of helping loyalist gangs set up Irish republicans and others to be murdered.

The indictment will be formally laid by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, who after years of investigation will confirm what was originally dismissed as lurid republican propaganda. The development will revive flagging interest in the Irish peace process, as will George Bush's arrival in Belfast tomorrow for talks with Tony Blair. In a two-day visit, the leaders will discuss Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

Sir John's report, to be published on 17 April, will conclude that a secret army intelligence unit and the RUC Special Branch both assisted loyalist killers to shoot republicans during the 1980s.

He will also accuse intelligence elements of obstructing and sabotaging his investigations into collusion. The Commissioner believes that a mysterious fire which broke out at his office near Belfast was the work of army intelligence.

In sum, his findings will be the most telling official criticism ever levelled at the security authorities during more than three decades of the Northern Ireland troubles.

They amount to accusing intelligence elements of using assassination to remove what they regarded as "undesirables". This involved targeting suspected members of the IRA and Sinn Fein as well as others such as Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

Mr Finucane, who was shot dead by loyalists in 1989, was regarded by the security forces as a thorn in their side after successfully defending some prominent republicans. It has emerged that more than one member of the loyalist team involved in his killing was a security force informer. Sir John's conclusions of collusion in the Finucane murder guarantee that his report will receive worldwide attention, given that a number of international human rights groups have already voiced concern about the lawyer's killing.

He is to recommend that serious criminal charges are brought against up to 20 policemen and undercover soldiers, in particular members of the ultra-secret Force Research Unit (FRU). This was headed by Brigadier (then Colonel) Gordon Kerr, who is currently serving in Iraq. After serving in Northern Ireland he was promoted to the key post of military attaché in Beijing.

Sir John is expected to stipulate that he found no evidence of political involvement in such activities by anyone in the Thatcher administration of the time. Sinn Fein and others can however be expected to claim that responsibility for the collusion extended to the highest level of government. Rather, Sir John is expected to say that "rogue elements", some at senior levels, were responsible for the collusion. He will call for sweeping changes in military and police procedures to establish new standards of control and oversight.

In 1990, following an earlier investigation, Sir John reported that any collusion had been "neither widespread nor institutionalised". His new findings will paint a very different and sinister picture.

Much of the responsibility for enacting changes will fall to Chief Constable Hugh Orde, who, before taking charge of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, was in day-to-day charge of the Stevens investigation. He has already made significant changes to the service, most particularly its Special Branch. The branch has in recent years been implicated in a series of damaging controversies in which it has been accused of both skulduggery and incompetence.