The most outspoken opponents of a Troubles amnesty are critics of the UK, now including the UN

Recent events surrounding the announcement of what will in effect be a Troubles amnesty must be both confusing and upsetting for victims of paramilitary violence.

Such victims are by far the largest category of people impacted by the Troubles, because terrorists killed 90% of the dead.

And given that most of the remaining 10% of killings, those by the state, were overwhelmingly legal the terrorist culpability is much greater than 90%. Most terror victims have had neither truth nor justice, and face little prospect of either.

You would think therefore, and many people do think, that an amnesty in such circumstances would be a particular wound and injustice for the large number of people whose lives were blighted by terrorism. And indeed it is such a wound and injustice for such innocent victims and survivors.

The problem is that the most vociferous opponents of an amnesty now are those groups and people who want to see former British army soldiers, RUC officers, intelligence experts, senior UK officials and even elderly Westminster politicians in the dock.

Among the people who are most upset about an amnesty are apologists for (sometimes overt but typically not) terror.

Think about that. Terrorists and their pals are so confident that their leaders will continue somehow to avoid criminal proceedings that they furiously want there to be trials of historic violence, most of it 50 years or so in the past.

Jeff Dudgeon, who has become one of the most important voices on the scandalous, pro terror direction of legacy (and who until recently was ignored outside of the Ulster Unionist Party) writes opposite (see link below) of his contempt for the UN critics of an amnesty, as if the UK was a murderous state like their own Argentina once was.

London is partly to blame for this. It never counters such nonsense and even its amnesty plan is rooted in panic, rather than clear, confident opposition to a terrorist narrative.

Jeff Dudgeon: The biased UN seems blind to the scale of human rights abuses by terrorists

Cillian McGrattan: London’s latest plan to deal with legacy is chance to reset the imbalance against UK state forces

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