Madam, - I notice that Martin McGuinness (December 4th), responding to my letter of November 29th, informs us that the inclusion of state killers in the "on-the-run" legislation is against the Weston Park Deal of 2001. What Mr McGuinness and Gerry Adams have failed to tell us on many occasions is that it was at Hillsborough in 2003 that they signed up to state killers getting away with murder.
That agreement explicitly covers "any scheduled offence. . .committed before 10 April 1998". Scheduled offences are offences tried in Diplock Courts. Murder is a scheduled offence - whether it is by the state or by paramilitaries. Martin McGuinness knows this. So when Sinn Féin leaders agreed to anybody who committed a scheduled offence being able to get away with it, they accepted state killers being able to get away with it - now and in the future.
They accepted this in black and white in the Hillsborough deal of 2003. That is the truth - and the truth will out.
Mr McGuinness also suggests that the SDLP has refused to meet victims of state violence. The truth is that the SDLP has always supported the victims of collusion. For Martin McGuinness to suggest otherwise is cheap and underhand and he knows it. Mark Durkan met Relatives for Justice, which represents the victims of collusion, as recently as last week.
Mr McGuinness also knows that had the SDLP not voted for 28-day detention in the House of Commons recently, three-month detention would have remained on the Bill going through the house. Of course Tony Blair would have preferred it if we, like Sinn Féin, had stayed away and helped him in his plans, but we refused to do so.
Martin McGuinness also knows that he and his colleagues are on the record as welcoming the British OTR legislation in its entirety after it was published. It was only two weeks later that Gerry Adams tried to repair the irreparable and called for state killers to be withdrawn from the legislation.
If Sinn Féin truly believes that this legislation is abhorrent, as it now says, it should accept Mark Durkan's call for it ask the British Government to withdraw the legislation in its entirety. Then we can begin a real process of truth and justice recovery. Then we can begin to leave the past behind on a moral basis - a basis where the rights of victims and survivors are placed front and centre, not where the wrongs of state and paramilitary killers are pardoned without the need for truth and justice. - Yours, etc,
ALBAN MAGINNESS MLA, SDLP Justice Spokesperson, Belfast.