Colombia Three and the stench of hypocrisy

ISN’T it great that we can rejoice at the acquittal of the Colombia Three?

We ignore the coincidence that while they were ‘touring’ Farc-controlled areas using false passports, the rebels there began using IRA-style car bombing and mortaring innocent civilians similar to the atrocities inflicted on our own Northern population.

Innocent blood, whether spilt on the streets of Omagh, Colombia or Madrid, will always cry to heaven for vengeance and we shake hands with the devil at our peril, even when it is politically expedient to do so.

Of course we don’t hold the franchise on such hypocrisy as evidenced by an American legal system which recently decided that the mob-slaying of two British soldiers in the North some years ago was a political offence while, at the same time, US forces threaten to annihilate Fallujah for an almost identical killing of four US citizens.

We have no moral authority to be selective in our condemnation of terrorism, whether the victims be in the rubble of the twin towers, mangled train carriages in Madrid or the dusty streets of Colombia.

John J Murray,

Garrylucas,

Kinsale,

Co Cork.