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Northern Ireland: Formal complaint on Rosemary Nelson

01 January 2001

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The human rights organisation, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), has lodged a formal complaint against the chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) with the office of the Police Ombudsman. The complaint alleges that Sir Ronnie Flanagan failed to properly investigate written threats to the civil rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson, who was an executive member of CAJ. The CAJ submitted copies of the threats to the Minister for Security who passed them to Flanagan for immediate investigation seven months before Rosemary was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in March 1999. The CAJ believes that the RUC's failure to look for the original documents means that they overlooked crucial forensic evidence that could identify those responsible for sending the threats and raises "serious questions about the efficacy of the investigation". They maintain that: "the chief constable or the officers he appointed to conduct the assessment of the risk failed to protect Rosemary Nelson. They failed to undertake the most basic of investigative steps to determine the source of the two documents." The organisation is asking the chief constable for an explanation "as to what steps, if any, were taken by the authorities to investigate the threats which were forwarded to them" in the seven months leading up to the murder.

Just News vol 15 no 1 (December) 2000.

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