Editorial: For once, a sense of relief at a common sense finding over the Coagh shootings

​For almost a decade this newspaper has chronicled the scandal of the handling of the legacy of terrorism.

We have pointed out that the ‘legacy of terrorism’ is a better phrase than ‘legacy of the Troubles’ to describe the fallout from the violent years. This is because the statistics of the Troubles are so stark and so easy to grasp, with 60% of the deaths caused by republican terrorists, 30% caused by loyalist terrorists and 10% by state forces. The latter killings were overwhelmingly legal and most of them happened in the chaotic, worst years of the IRA-led terror, pre 1975.

Yet the whole apparatus of the UK state has turned on the security forces who, overall, acted with such restraint and who prevented civil war.

This lopsided process is ongoing, although London has tried to close it down via the legacy act. Closing it down, while a deeply imperfect and in some respects cowardly response (cowardly in that shutting things down mitigates the worst of the republican-led and taxpayer, legal aid-funded campaign but it does not take the investigative fight to the murderers, who have escaped almost any significant examination into their decades of terrorism), is nonetheless incomparably better than the ongoing lawfare against state forces.

Of all the grisly aspects to this scandal, the sight of ex security forces fearing pursuit for such obviously justified killings as the SAS shootings of the IRA East Tyrone mass murder gang at Loughgall in 1987 has been perhaps the worst.

It is remarkable that justice has been so inverted that defenders of the security forces should be relieved ​at yesterday’s finding that an SAS ambush of three IRA men on a 1991 murder mission in Coagh was justified, but they will be relieved. The coroner was satisfied the use of force was “reasonable” as the soldiers had an honest belief that it was needed to prevent loss of life – a common sense finding.