Northern Ireland: Caught in the Cross Hair

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Patrick Finucane and his family had just settled around the table for Sunday dinner in their North Belfast home, when three men slipped in through the unlocked front door. One of the intruders, wielding an automatic, opened fire on Finucane, instantly killing the 38-year-old Catholic lawyer. His wife, who was wounded in the ankle, and three children watched the bloody scene in horror as the gang escaped in a commandeered taxi.

In claiming responsibility for Finucane's death, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, an outlawed Protestant group, declared that the lawyer was "an officer in the I.R.A.," a charge his family denied. Finucane represented the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, in its successful battle to win legal clearance to challenge the British government's ban on broadcasts by the I.R.A. and other extremist groups. His brother Dermot, 28, was sentenced in 1982 to 18 years on a terrorist charge but escaped in a mass I.R.A. breakout from Ulster's Maze Prison in 1983.

In the region's long record of sectarian violence, this was the first attack to claim the life of a lawyer. Finucane's murder sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's 1,450-member legal fraternity as Protestant and Catholic lawyers alike feared that they too could become terrorist targets.