Clean slate for ex-terror offenders, says SF
The criminal records of people who served jail sentences in Northern Ireland for terrorist offences should be cleared, Sinn Féin delegates demanded at their annual conference in Dublin today.
Former hunger striker Raymond McCartney, who stood for Sinn Féin in Foyle in last November’s Assembly elections, told the party’s Ard Fheis that the demand was not an attempt to “airbrush the past“.
He said: “Our political opponents and sections of the media have claimed that republicans are trying to airbrush the past.
“Then we are told when we are argue for a commemorative museum at Long Kesh (the site of the Maze Prison) we are trying to glorify the past.
“Expunging the record of those with criminals records is not an attempt to airbrush the past.
“It is about the future. It is about equality. It is about ending discrimination in employment. It is about the right to travel.”
Delegates also passed a motion urging the British and Irish governments to honour their pledge after the 2001 Weston Park talks to allow terror suspects who fled Northern Ireland during the Troubles to return from exile without facing imprisonment.
The conference backed a motion calling on ministers in London and Dublin to acknowledge that Northern Ireland’s Human Rights Commission had lost all public confidence and needed a “complete restructuring“.
There was also a call for the British government to appoint an independent selection panel to choose members of the North's Equality Commission.
Upper Bann delegate Dara O’Hagan said the commission was “unrepresentative of society” and was “openly being loaded with unionist political representation“.
She asked: “What expertise on equality issues does Daphne Trimble have aside from being the wife of the Ulster Unionist Party leader and of the man who single-handedly tried to dismantle the equality agenda?”
