Brigadier named over collusion to murder Catholics in Ulster

A senior Army officer is among six people who may be prosecuted over claims that security forces colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to murder nationalists in Northern Ireland. Evidence against Brigadier Gordon Kerr, now the military attaché in Beijing, and other serving and former police and Army officers has been sent to Crown prosecutors in Britain's longest-running criminal investigation.

Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, will publish a summary today of his inquiry, which found that a covert Army unit, commanded by Brigadier Kerr, then a colonel, in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as RUC Special Branch officers, colluded with Protestant hit-squads to kill IRA suspects.

Evidence for possible charges ranging from conspiracy to murder, to perverting the course of justice and breaches of the Official Secrets Act is contained in the report from which Sir Alasdair Fraser, QC, director of public prosecutions for Northern Ireland, will make a decision.

Files on 23 people have been sent to the CPS, although sources close to the Stevens inquiry say only six are thought to contain substantial evidence of alleged wrongdoing. The detectives concluded that four or five members of the Force Research Unit (FRU) ran a rogue operation in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s that led to murders. The FRU passed information to loyalist terrorists, mainly through Brian Nelson, an agent who infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association.

Details passed included those of Pat Finucane, a Belfast solicitor who acted for republicans. Mr Finucane was murdered in front of his family by gunmen in 1989. Sir John's inquiry found widespread collusion between paramilitaries and security forces. Of the 100 key witnesses his officers questioned, two thirds were found to be agents or "touts" of the Army and former RUC, with three being handled by MI5.