Sickening efforts to rewrite history to justify terrorism such as the Omagh bomb

This is typical of the sickening efforts to rewrite history which are all too common in the republican movement.

Mr Collins seeks to lay the blame for the deaths of 29 innocent people at the door of the security services and implies that they mishandled a bomb warning in the run up to the attack and that they failed to act on intelligence.

Neither of these allegations is substantiated.

I wish to make it very clear that 29 innocent people were murdered 20 years ago in Omagh by the Real IRA.

The Real IRA did not care about potential civilian casualties.

If they had they would not have planted the bomb that brought death and destruction to the area.

There was no justification for the indiscriminate murder of innocent people that was unleashed against the people of Omagh the central culpability lies with the Real IRA.

Republican terrorist apologists are merely trying to distort the issues in a vain attempt to justify their actions.

Alexander Redpath, Councillor, Lisburn and Castlereagh, Ulster Unionist Party