Black family are latest terror victims who await justice

Mr Black, a prison officer, was shot dead by republican terrorists in 2012. The failure to get justice against whoever was responsible for this heinous crime means that the Black family have become the latest in a long list of victims of terror going back decades never to have had justice.

His son Kyle has spoken movingly of how prisoners asked for a book of condolence to be opened after the murder. “My dad was a very loving and caring and compassionate man. He was a great father and role model for me and my sister Kyra and he was a very loving husband to my mummy.”

Since the murder of two soldiers at Massereene in Co Antrim in 2009, Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar, there has been a depressingly low number of convictions for such murders — the PSNI officers Stephen Carroll in 2009 and Ronan Kerr in 2011, Mr Black in 2012, and Adrian Ismay in 2016. The only murder convictions, of two terrorists in the Carroll case, led to a nationalist campaign alleging a miscarriage of justice. One of the only glimmers of hope in this sorry tale of the state failing to achieve justice is that that campaign failed.

Terrorists are expert at covering their tracks and so during the Troubles many killers never faced justice. By adhering scrupulously to the rule of law, the state had to allow terrorists their freedom and so many victims died. Now the legacy structures that look back at Troubles crime are disproportionately focused on state forces.

On the opposite page of the print edition (web link below), Professor Henry Patterson writes about the concern, even dismay, of terrorist victims towards the mooted Stormont House legacy structures, which were explained to them at a meeting in Fermanagh.

The News Letter is aware of growing concern about these structures among victims groups and politicians, and we will be reporting closely on them.

Henry Patterson: Anger and pain at Fermanagh legacy event, as well as cynicism towards proposed HIU