Radical action needed from London on legacy scandal

Downing Street must intervene on legacy.

Yet another soldier faces a major Troubles trial but terrorist leaders do not face trial.

People who not only engaged in murder, maiming and bombing but orchestrated it (and were free to do so for decades) have either not faced trial on charges commensurate with their crimes or not at all.

Few people would expect that if such a mass murderer was arrested, he or she would be so in the fashion that the retired police officer — disgracefully under investigation by the Police Ombudsman for 17 years — was arrested by large numbers of police officers, as we revealed on Monday.

Some 30% of cases before PSNI legacy branch relate to state killings, when 10% of killings were such, most of them legitimate — an appalling imbalance. But there are reports that it is worse than that and that the major investigations into the state are in fact overwhelming the legacy branch.

The prime minister was of course right about the imbalance in favour of terrorists. But comments to the House of Commons are not enough: radical action is needed. Politicians here who defend the security forces should unite across parties to try to relay to the British public and GB politicians what is happening in the Province. There is already outrage at Westminster but the scale of the scandal must be detailed.

There must be no authorisation of multi-million pound funding for legacy inquests, around 40 of whom were terrorists.

Doug Beattie MC, right, is making the sort of inventive suggestions that this process needs, such as that the government releases information on ex terrorist politicians.

This is pertinent even if there is an amnesty because, as Jim Allister explained on this page yesterday, security forces are subject to findings that do not meet the criminal standard. So must terrorists who almost destroyed this society.

Since an unforgiving approach to the past is the way things are going, London must lead on the push for balance –balance the mooted Historical Investigations Unit is unlikely to bring.