Gerry Adams to be released without charge this evening

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. Agreeing to stop having people murdered is not the same as saving lives!

As to moral equivalence: During the troubles,
Republican terrorists killed about 600 people, not one of them justifiably.
Unionist terrorists killed about 300 people (some with the complicity of UK forces), not one of them justifiably.
The UK forces killed about 100 people, most but by no means all of them criminals killed while resisting arrest.

There certainly were both unjustifiable killings of civilians, and outright murders, by members of the UK forces, as well as collusion with Unionist murder groups, and I think it's regrettable that so few people have ended up in jail for these, just as I think it's regrettable that so many Republican and Unionist murders were let out early or not pursued. But the number is often exaggerated - it's well into double figures, but well short of a tenth of the number of victims of the IRA (which is still far, far too many - when the proudest boast you can make for a police force is "murdered less than a tenth of the number of people a dedicated murder organisation did" then something has gone terribly, terribly wrong...)

But, sadly, that was necessary for peace - the politicians involved took the view that letting two murderers from different sides off cancelled out, rather than adding out.