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Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart has challenged Michelle O’Neill to continue her stand against sectarianism and direct one of her MPs to delete a tweet glorifying an IRA man who burnt a young mother to death in front of her son.

Last week the Sinn Fein Vice President condemned a sectarian video in which loyalists mocked Tyrone murder victim Michaela McAreavey.

But this week Sinn Fein has declined to comment after its MP Francie Molloy tweeted in memory of IRA hunger striker Thomas McElwee, who burnt a young Ballymena mother to death in front her her son.

McElwee died on hunger strike while serving time for a firebomb attack in 1976 which killed the 27-year-old mother-of-three in her family’s Ballymena clothes shop.

She was checking a bag left in the shop and only just had time to warn her nine-year-old son to escape before she was caught in the fireball and burned to death in front of him. A list of targets was later found in a coat in McElwee’s car. He pleaded guilty to owning the coat and the bomb and was jailed.

On Tues Francie Molloy tweeted: “Thomas McElwee joined the Hunger Strike 41 years ago today. He was only 23. RIP.”

But Mrs Lockhart responded that his legacy “is one of death, of destruction, of cowardice”. She added: “Thomas McElwee left a nine-year-old boy to live with the lifelong trauma of watching his mother be burnt alive. He is no hero. He is evil personified.

“It is utterly shameful that Sinn Fein’s Mid-Ulster MP Francie Molloy publicly celebrates this individual. His actions fly in the face of the words of SF Vice President Michelle O’Neill, who recently stated, ‘Hate and sectarianism have no place in our society’. Yet McElwee was a man whose actions personify hate and sectarianism.”

Mrs Lockhart added: “I urge Michelle O’Neill to show leadership, and to show she means what she says, and to request Francie Molloy delete his tweet and issue an apology. To fail to do so will show that Sinn Fein remain wedded to revelling in the evil of the IRA.” Sinn Fein declined to offer any response.

Last year Sinn Fein’s youth wing tweeted McElwee’s last words. He wrote: “My Last Wish; I ask for forgiveness from everyone. I would rather live than die but if I have to die I would like to let the people know that I bear no animosity, no ill feeling towards anybody. I would like to live among the people as a social worker and promote peace and harmony among Catholics and Protestants and also with the British.”

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