THE FAMILY OF murdered human rights solicitor Pat Finucane is to meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary of State Owen Paterson next week.

Finucane’s widow Geraldine, who was injured in the 1989 attack which killed her husband, will travel to Number 10 Downing Street on Tuesday with other members of the Finucane family.

Loyalist paramilitaries shot Finucane dead at the family’s home in Belfast on 12 February 1989. Ken Barett, a former Special Branch informer, pleaded guilty in 2004 to the killing and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in May 2006.

UTV reports that the family said in a statement today that it is demanding a fully independent inquiry into Finucane’s death and the alleged collusion of security forces with paramilitaries.

An inquiry into the death was announced in 2004, but the family objected to it being established under the Inquiries Act, saying that it means the inquiry is accountable to the minister who sets up the inquiry instead of the parliament.

Calling for an independent public inquiry, Geraldine Finucane says she believes that the “only way our society can move forward into a peaceful future is by examining the controversies of our past and exposing them fully for all to see”, according to RTÉ.