Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:
“Mary Lou McDonald obviously recognises that she needed to backtrack somewhat after the masked slipped in her interview with the Sunday Independent last weekend in which she claimed that the IRA campaign was justified.
“She might say now that it isn’t her role to justify anything but after endorsing Provo murders a few days ago she only has herself to blame when people ask the questions which logically follow.
“Just what about the PIRA campaign was justified? The M62 coach bombing because it resulted in the murder of nine soldiers? Were the two children – aged 2 and 5 – and their mother murdered in the same incident merely collateral?
“Were the murders of Nora Field, out shopping for her 92 year old mother, and Irish photographer John Breslin justified because they happened to be passing Chelsea Barracks when an IRA bomb exploded?
“Was the use of Patsy Gillespie as a human bomb justified?
“Those are just a few of the examples of how the IRA decided to “take on the British state” as Ms McDonald puts it.
“The truth is that each and every murder carried out by the PIRA was unjustified and unjustifiable. Any objective study of the Provo campaign will tell you that skulking in ditches in an effort to shoot an off duty police officer or UDR man in the back didn’t constitute taking anyone on. When they did actually encounter the forces of the British state they either ran away or met a swift end as was the case at Loughgall.”