As Ann Travers says of SF leader's tweet: '˜What a joke!'

Sinn Fein’s leader at Stormont wrote: “I welcome the opportunity to meet with the Birmingham families today and listen to their concerns. I extended our sympathy to them. All families need to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.”

The message included a photograph of Ms O’Neill with the relatives. She then tagged on the message: @Justice4the21

What did she mean? Was this a concession that the killings were murders? Indeed mass murders?

If so, is she calling on the IRA to reveal the murderers and bring them to the justice that they so richly deserve — along with all the other terrorists who blew people to smithereens in public places during the Troubles, such as at Bloody Friday, Enniskillen, Harrods, Claudy and so on?

This sort of conduct would be absurd if it wasn’t so tragic and insulting. Ann Travers, whose sister Mary was murdered by the IRA at a church when they tried to shoot her judge father, spoke for much of the country when she responded to Ms O’Neill: “What a joke! Says the lady who commemorates IRA murderers and still justifies their actions.”

And a Sinn Fein leader who repeatedly cites the Lord Chief Justice over legacy inquests when so little is known about the IRA’s strike at the rule of law by targeting judges for decades.

Increasingly, republicans seem to be trying to ingratiate themselves with IRA victims. A Sinn Fein candidate and Queen’s University lecturer repeatedly expressed regret over the murder of the lecturer Edgar Graham at that university, but did not condemn the calculated shooting.

An SF mayor recently went to a memorial to an IRA bomb that she has not condemned and which killed six pensioners.

Some people are falling for this trickery: republicans expressing regret about, but not condemning, a murder.