When is a terrorist not a terrorist? In a press release from the First Ministers’ office…

THE Victims Commission is barely out of the blocks, but already (and predictably) it’s at the centre of a political row involving (predictably) loyalist victim’s spokesman Willie Frazer. According to the News Letter, the FAIR spokesman was dismayed at references to one commissioner’s husband being described on the First Ministers’ website as an ‘IRA volunteer who was killed by the SAS whilst on active service in 1984’. Frazer says his group will pull out if those killed while engaged in paramilitary activity are put on a par with innocent civilians. “The word is terrorist or criminal, not volunteer,” says UUP MLA David Burnside. Maybe Willie will direct a complaint to the loyalist Victims Commissioner, since we appear to have one for each strain of opinion in the Executive. The commission will be ‘feeling our pain’ for a cool quarter of a million a year – so perhaps the first victim is really the taxpayer.

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