With the PSNI setting up a specialist team of detectives to examine “specific crimes”, “dating back to the 1980s and 1990s”, which they believe “may have involved present-day dissidents”, Malachi O’Doherty has some timely advice for Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness et al.
From the Belfast Telegraph article
History is letting the Provos off lightly in not plunging them into their own civil war.
On balance, McGuinness must surely see that this is not as hard as facing into failure would be.
He is already being told that he is a hypocrite for condemning the murder of Ronan Kerr, having endorsed the murders of 301 other police officers, a policewoman shot in the back outside Derry courthouse, men shot on their doorsteps, coming from church, visiting hospitals.
Hard, too, will be the challenge of preserving that memory as honorable while telling those who would use the same methods today that they are enemies and traitors.
Today, Martin McGuinness says that the police must win. Now he must tell the dissidents that he was in the wrong, too; that the best evidence that they can’t win is that the Provos didn’t win either.
And he must sit down with Chief Constable Matt Baggott – if he hasn’t done so already – and tell him everything he knows that might help him nail the old diehards.
Rather than continuing to send out mixed messages…
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