THE TRADITIONAL Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister has called on the PSNI to investigate the circumstances surrounding publication of a picture purporting to show Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness posing with a Luger pistol in Derry in 1972.
William Frazer of the Protestant victims’ group, Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (Fair) posted the picture online.
Earlier this week Mr Frazer said his organisation spent recent days with an “international team of lawyers” to discuss plans to take a civil case against Mr McGuinness and a number of reputed senior IRA figures, including Thomas “Slab” Murphy from south Armagh.
Mr Frazer’s plan is to pursue a case similar to the successful case recently brought by the Omagh families against suspected Real IRA members allegedly implicated in the Omagh bombing.
After a spokesman for Mr McGuinness described Mr Frazer as a “self-publicist”, Mr Frazer posted the 1972 picture with the comment: “Well how’s this for a bit of self publicity. We call on McGuinness to explain just what he was doing in this photo.”
It was headlined, “Your Deputy First Minister as you’ve never seen him before.”
TUV leader Mr Allister said that unionists must “break their ties with Sinn Féin/IRA”.
“Everyone – including those unionists who share power with Sinn Féin – knew that Martin McGuinness was a senior IRA member when that wicked terrorist organisation was killing people on a daily basis. However, in light of this particularly stark new evidence of his involvement in that murderous criminal gang McGuinness should be investigated by the police,” he added.
“Nowhere else in the United Kingdom could one serve in ministerial office when a photograph such as this was in the public domain,” said Mr Allister.
“ . . . People were being slaughtered by the Provisionals around the time when this photo was taken. Was the gun which appears in this photo used in any of those attacks?” he added.
Mr Allister said he has written to the PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde and to the DUP First Minister Peter Robinson about the issue. He said he was challenging Mr Robinson “as to why he continues to occupy joint office with an IRA commander”.
When Sinn Féin was asked for an official response Assembly member John O’Dowd said there was “nothing new in recent comments from Jim Allister”.
He said that the TUV leader’s “agenda is to take us back to a past where unionist domination and discrimination existed”.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said people were entitled to take legal cases if they wished.
He indicated it would be hypocritical of him to reject such moves when he was supporting the families of the 11 people killed by the British army in Ballymurphy in west Belfast in 1971 and also with the family of Harry Holland who was murdered in west Belfast.
“But we have to differentiate between genuine efforts to try and bring closure for victims and what appears to be self-serving publicity efforts by Willie Frazer,” he said.