Cory report likely to be released this week

The Cory report into allegations of collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries on both sides of the Irish border…

The Cory report into allegations of collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries on both sides of the Irish border is due to be published later this week, it emerged today.

A spokeswoman from the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed there was a "strong likelihood" that the two reports received by the Government would be published on Thursday.

The Irish Government received two reports and the British four, following Canadian Judge Peter Cory's investigation into eight murders in six controversial cases.

Judge Cory is understood to have concluded there is evidence that rogue members of An Garda Siochána may have provided information that led to murder of two senior Royal Ulster Constabulary officers in 1989.

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The contents of the documents, submitted in October to both governments after 18 months of investigations, were due to be published simultaneously.

But arguments over the British government's timing of publication of the report have escalated recently. Relatives of some of those murdered have pressed for early publication of the reports rather than the delay predicted by the British government.

The Irish government's reports concern the IRA murders of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson in 1987 and RUC Superintendent Bob Buchanan and Inspector Harry Breen in 1989.

The four cases that Judge Cory dealt with north of the Border involve the 1989 UDA murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, the beating to death by loyalists of Catholic Robert Hamill in Portadown in 1997, the INLA murder of LVF leader Billy Wright in 1997 and the LVF murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson in 1999.