Catholics and Protestants impacted by IRA leader Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane to unite at European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism event at Stormont
Southern Catholics and northern Protestants who were impacted by IRA leader Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane will sit side by side at this year's European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism event at Stormont, this Monday.
The EU marked the date in memory of the 200 people murdered and 2,500 injured in the Madrid train bombings on 11 March 2004.
Each year, sponsored by the TUV and SDLP, victims of loyalist and republican terrorism are given a platform at Stormont to tell of the devastating impact of terrorism.
This year’s event will be held in the Senate Chamber in Parliament Buildings at 11am on Monday 10 March.
Kenny Donaldson, director of victims group SEFF, said: "At this year's event something especially poignant will happen. The family of Pte Patrick Kelly, an Irish Army soldier who was murdered by the IRA alongside Garda Gary Sheehan when the IRA kidnapped Don Tidey in County Leitrim in 1983 will be here.
"And they will sit with the family of 17-year-old Linda Boyle, who was killed in the IRA bombing of Bayardo Pub on the Shankill Road in 1975. Their connection is that both were impacted by the terrorism of the late IRA leader Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane and his comrades."
While terrorism sought to divide people of different political and religious backgrounds, he said, it is the values of terror victims "which had united us as people”.
SEFF will also host a book launch by Austin Stack about his father Brian, a senior Irish prison officer, who was shot by the IRA in 1983, in the Stormont Hotel on Monday at 1.30pm.