Victims group: ‘John Downey was found liable for Hyde Park murders and faces other charges yet a court let him to return to Donegal’

This is a man who in recent months was found responsible within the civil courts for the deaths of four innocents murdered at Hyde Park and who now also stands accused of the murders of two UDR soldiers in Enniskillen.

We are an organisation who are not without compassion, whatever John Downey has done we would not wish him dead, to do so puts us in the same mindset he demonstrated when stealing other’s lives.

But we are absolutely aghast that the courts would permit an individual recently found responsible for the deaths of four soldiers in a civil court to be able to locate out of jurisdiction after the debacle of trying to get him extradited.

This is a man who was on the run for over 30 years.

Not for the first time the courts have let innocent victims and indeed society down.

The entire criminal justice system seems to us to be perpetrator centric, not victim centred.

John Downey could and should have been re-housed in a rural setting in Northern Ireland.

The decision taken to allow him to cross a jurisdictional border is crazy, particularly against the supposed rationale given — concern for his health yet his wife’s health profession puts her in a high risk category for contraction of the virus or to be a carrier.

If he absconds then Sinn Fein and the system should be held accountable,”

Kenny Donaldson, Spokesman Innocent Victims United, Fermanagh