No one dared suggest that those who perpetrated this evil were also victims, or deserving of equal respect.

On Wednesday, I stood in the Europa hotel in Belfast and heard that obscenity peddled by the Eames/Bradley Commission.

Like many, my stomach turned at the proposal that as reward for murder the families of terrorists should get £12,000.

To see Michelle Williamson, who lost both her parents in the Shankill chip shop bomb, be told that she should be treated identically to how the family of IRA bomber Begley, who made her a victim, is treated, is utterly immoral and an outrage, as it is for every other innocent victim.

Eames/Bradley have brought immense additional pain, tears and sorrow to innocent victims across this Province and they should hang their heads in shame

The fact that they are following the template of the definition of "victim", which equates perpetrator and victim, contained in the Victims and Survivors Order 2006, underscores the abject failure of those, who pretend they control Stormont, to change this monstrous definition in the 20 months of devolution.

This legislative definition was one of the evils of direct rule but the Party, which promised to right the wrongs of direct rule, is powerless to change it because of the veto which their Belfast Agreement devolution gives IRA/Sinn Fein.

The DUP deplores the Eames/Bradley proposal, but every day in OFMDFM – where the same equivalence prevails between democrats and terrorists - they administer the same definition in the affairs of victims.

What is the point in being in government if they can't even deliver this most basic of moral imperatives for victims?

Yours etc.,

Jim Allister

Traditional Unionist MEP

139 Holywood Road

Belfast BT4 3BE