Official title: The failure to take action against the West Belfast UDA prior to the murder of Patrick Finucane
What this chapter covers
Chapter 17 asks why the security forces did not take action against the West Belfast UDA, the unit that carried out the murder, in the months before February 1989, despite the intelligence they held about its activities.
Key points
The chapter draws together material from earlier chapters: the intelligence flowing from agents such as Brian Nelson and William Stobie, the general pattern of inaction on loyalist threats described in chapter 9, and the priority given to loyalist violence discussed in chapter 5. It considers whether protecting agents' cover influenced decisions not to disrupt the group.
Why it matters
The question here is broader than whether one man should have been warned. It is whether the way intelligence was used left an active murder unit free to operate. Read with chapter 16, it explains de Silva's view that state failures were a significant part of the context of the killing.