Almost a decade after the civil rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was killed in a loyalist bomb attack, and after a sustained campaign for justice, an inquiry is to examine whether the authorities played a role in her murder. The Catholic mother of three said that she received death threats, including two that she alleged came from members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. She was killed in March 1999, aged 40, after a booby-trap bomb exploded under her family car outside her home in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Volunteer Force, claimed responsibility for the attack. No one was charged and the Northern Ireland Ombudsman ruled last year that police failed to deal properly with the threats made against her. Her family have claimed that the threats came because of her willingness to speak publicly about alleged sectarianism among the security forces and collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

British intelligence officers, police chiefs and civil servants will be questioned at the inquiry, which begins tomorrow in Belfast but is expected to take more than two years.

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