The widow of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane will appeal against a ruling that the government’s rejection of a statutory public inquiry was lawful.

In September, Geraldine Finucane lost a legal challenge in Belfast’s High Court against the UK government’s 2011 decision not to order an inquiry.

Her solicitor Peter Madden, who co-founded Madden & Finucane Solicitors with the late Mr Finucane in 1979, has confirmed appeal papers have been lodged and the case will go before the Court of Appeal.

Mr Finucane, a human rights lawyer, was shot dead in 1989 by loyalist paramilitaries who were colluding with MI5, according to previous investigations.

In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the “shocking levels of collusion” involved in the killing as he launched the Pat Finucane Review, the product of an examination led by British lawyer Sir Desmond de Silva.

However, Mrs Finucane said de Silva’s report was “not the truth” and did not constitute an independent statutory inquiry as originally promised by the UK government.

Mr Madden said former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson had “engaged in a sham exercise, inviting representations from the family as to the model of inquiry which would be acceptable to them” but had “absolutely no intention of establishing such an inquiry”.

He added: “A full independent and international tribunal of inquiry, where documents will examined in public and witnesses shall be compelled to attend and be cross examined by Geraldine’s lawyers, remains the only model capable of achieving the truth of Pat’s murder.”