Letter: The facts are clear, terrorists were overwhelmingly to blame for violence in the Troubles

It is commonplace for security correspondents, BBC pundits, and others to claim that during the ‘Troubles’ some 20,000 republican and loyalist terrorists were convicted and jailed, whilst convictions of security forces were minimal.

They cite this to imply that the current cases against the security forces are just ‘levelling up’. This is nonsense

The facts are clear, between 1969 and 2003 the Cain Index shows that there were 37,000 terrorist shootings and over 19,000 bombings including incendiary bombs. That is almost 56,000 terrorist incidents. As each shooting/bombing could involve at least 10 people (the Godfather, the bomb maker, the scouts, the planner, the bomber/gunman, several lookouts, and safe house owners) it is fair to extrapolate that there were 500,000 offences in which people were guilty of involvement in those bombings/shootings. So the 20,000 imprisoned is a very low clear-up rate indeed.

Disputed actions by the security forces are less than 0.1% of that total. The terrorists who went through the courts were often expendable cannon fodder. Godfathers like McGuiness and many others never faced justice.

Tom Nash, Derriaghy