A sensible ruling from Europe on the SAS killing of two Irish republican terrorists

News Letter editorial on Friday February 18 2022:
News Letter editorialNews Letter editorial
News Letter editorial

On and on goes the legacy scandal, barely challenged outside this newspaper.

The utter scandal of elderly soldiers facing trial for single killings that lacked pre-meditation, while IRA leaders, responsible for decades of mass murder, seem to enjoy a de facto amnesty.

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The scandal of ombudsman findings of ‘collusive behaviours’ against an RUC against whom there is not evidence that has stood up in a criminal court (an RUC that has an exemplary record of restraint against the IRA, and clearly did not help loyalist terrorists, who patently lacked good intelligence).

The scandal of more than £200 million of UK money being spent on Bloody Sunday and Ballymurphy, then files being sent to prosecutors, while one IRA massacre after another lacks so much as scrutiny, let alone a murder charge.

The scandal of successive Irish governments trying to humiliate the UK on legacy in Europe and America, by pushing an Irish republican narrative of the Troubles, and UK ministers too timid to so much as contradict them, let alone order the public inquiry into Ireland’s shameful extradition record — as a result of which so many people died, particularly along the border, while the Irish state harboured known killers.

The scandal of Northern Ireland and London court rulings, including the Supreme Court findings on the murder of Pat Finucane and on the internment of Gerry Adams, that keep on track the grossly imbalanced legacy focus on the security forces that stopped civil war.

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And yet, at times, when people in authority look at the facts, IRA lies about the past fall away pretty fast. The European Court of Human Rights, to which ‘human rights’ activists flock in cases against the UK state, has ruled that the investigation into the killing of terrorists Martin McCaughey and Dessie Grew, far from having been ineffective, was thorough.

Meanwhile, lawfare against the UK rolls on, including attempts get rulings against the state for killings such as the SAS stopping of IRA serial murderers at Loughgall and Coagh.

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