Stevens Inquiries

The Stevens Inquiries were three official British government inquiries led by Sir John Stevens concerning collusion in Northern Ireland between loyalist paramilitaries and the state security forces. While Stevens declared in 1990 that collusion was "neither wide-spread nor institutionalised", by April 2003 he acknowledged that he had uncovered collusion at a level "way beyond" his 1990 view. Much of Stevens' evidence was obtained from advanced fingerprint techniques to link people to documents. By 2005 the team had identified 2,000 people from their prints with a further 1,015 sets of prints outstanding.

In September 1989 RUC chief constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, ordered the initial enquiry about the circumstances following the August 1989 death of Loughlin Maginn. Maginn, a 28-year-old Catholic, was shot by the UFF at his home in Lissize, near Rathfriland. Although Maginn had no paramilitary connections, the Ulster Defence Association claimed he was a Provisional IRA intelligence officer. In an attempt to prove the accuracy of their targeting, the UDA published security force documents and a video of police intelligence. (It was later found that the video had been provided by sympathetic soldiers using equipment supplied by UDA double agent Brian Nelson).

From the outset Stevens recounts a concerted campaign to discredit the Inquiry in the media. Furthermore he described the British Army induction he received as obvious lies. He was specifically told that a dedicated Military Intelligence unit did not operate in Northern Ireland and only found out about the Force Research Unit when senior RUC officers blamed the unit for an arson attack at his Inquiry headquarters.

Following their discovery of the then unknown Brian Nelson's fingerprints on security documents, the Inquiry team encountered a wall of silence as they tried to investigate further: Brian Fitzsimmons, Acting Head of the RUC's Special Branch, became evasive telling Stevens:We can't help you with this man; and, at the Grosvenor Road station, Nelson's card in the intelligence card system was initially whipped away from the investigators. However the team persevered and gathered enough fresh evidence to plan a secret operation to arrest Nelson on Monday 10 January 1990.

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