‘Focus on terrorist killers hurts forgotten victims’: UDR man’s brother

Milkman and part-time UDR soldier James Robinson was shot dead on October 19, 1979 by the IRA as he drove his delivery van close to the main Fintona to Omagh Road – 40 years ago today.

The 20-year-old was found slumped over the wheel of the vehicle which had run off the lonely, country road.

His brother Andrew Robinson, 57, told the News Letter that it’s hard for families such as his own when the families of terrorists who were killed are given a platform to complain about their deaths.

“Whenever you watch the news you see other people fighting for justice. A life is a life at the end of the day, whatever side of the house you are on, but it seems to me that the families of terrorists who are in uproar more about ‘collusion’ claims and that is a annoying.

“It makes it harder when you see those families – of people killed by the SAS or Army – kicking up a fuss and being listened to, but at the end of the those people were out to kill some poor man out to a day’s work,” Mr Robinson said.

“It gets to me a bit. My brother was out to do a day’s work on his milk run, and then he would go out after that to provide protection to the community.

“His life was taken but you don’t see anything being done about the terrorists responsible.”

Mr Robinson was the youngest of 11 children and had just left school aged 16 when his brother was killed.

Six months after the murder his 19-year-old sister Elaine took her own life.

He has given up hope that anyone will ever be prosecuted for his brother’s murder.

“It’s been 40 years and there has been nobody prosecuted and we don’t know any more than we knew back then,” he said.

“We got a report from the HET (Historical Enquiries Team) but I think that was a waste of time.

“What they told us was basically what was printed in the papers at the time.

“You are just forgotten about. From the day and hour the brother was killed we had no contact with the police to tell us what was being done or anything else.

“There were so many killings, particularly in the 70s, but they shouldn’t forget about the families of the people killed by terrorists,” Mr Robinson added.

According to the book Lost Lives, a detective told an inquest in February 1980 that two men were being sought in connection with the attack on James Robinson.