Calls for Bloody Sunday amnesty

Calls for Bloody Sunday soldiers to be granted amnesty on the back of a deal for IRA on-the-runs are inevitable and predictable, a senior Northern Ireland politician has said.

Mark Durkan, Foyle MP for the nationalist SDLP, said it is no surprise formersecretary of state Peter Hain is pushing the idea which he said was a direct result of selfish misdealing by Sinn Féin.

In a week when controversy over the on-the-runs scheme threatened to pull down Stormont’s devolved government, Mr Hain said it was clear for anyone who wanted to see that assurances given to IRA members were not get-out-of-jail cards, immunity or amnesty.

And with full details of the scheme now public, the Labour MP said it would bea waste of police resources to prosecute soldiers who killed 14 unarmed peopleat a civil rights march in Derry in 1972.

Scandal and political crisis over the handling of IRA on-the-runs was sparked when the trial of John Downey for the 1982 Hyde Park bomb spectacularly collapsed last week in London.

“Those who have stood over the scheme revealed in the high court case haveclaimed that it doesn’t imply an amnesty, and that everybody really knew everything about it,” Mr Durkan said.

“Yet now, one of its authors is saying that the fact of the scheme should meanamnesty for everybody and anybody in relation to anything. We will also haveothers, including Tories and unionists rallying around such a demand.

“Sinn Féin know if others had really known about the ‘Shinners’ List’, and letters having such import on a court case, those others would have then beendemanding indemnity for the security forces too. That presumably was one of the reasons for key aspects of the scheme being hidden.”

Mr Durkan said Mr Hain’s position was clear in 2005 when he prepared legislation for an amnesty that was never enacted.

“I know that many families may be anxious and aggrieved by the inevitable and predictable line that has now come from Peter Hain, and will be pushed by others, but this is a consequence of Sinn Féin’s selfish misdealing, which we will have to work hard to resist,” the former SDLP leader said.

Mr Downey, 62, a Sinn Féin member and former oyster farmer who denies planting the Hyde Park bomb, returned home to Donegal where a planned homecoming party was cancelled.

He had wrongly been told by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) that he was not wanted for questioning or prosecution in the UK despite a Metropolitan Police warrant for his arrest for the murders of soldiers.

The case revealed the extent of an assurance scheme for on-the-runs and a deal the last Labour government struck with Sinn Féin that saw more than 180 individuals given letters similar to Mr Downey’s, clearing their way to return home.

Another five cases involving IRA terror suspects are active.

Writing a first-hand account in the Sunday Telegraph of how the scheme came about, Mr Hain said it is risible for key politicians to claim they had noknowledge of the so-called comfort letters for on-the-runs.

He suggested that if a line was to be drawn on Northern Ireland’s past it mustinclude the pursuit of the Bloody Sunday paratroopers.

The political crisis centred on First Minister Peter Robinson who threatened to resign unless an inquiry was launched and letters to on-the-runs rescinded.

A judge is examining the entire issue but the letters remain in place.