Rathfriland based Innocent Victims Support Group, South Down Action for Healing Wounds, has welcomed the scrapping of the on-the-runs legislation by the Government last week. A spokesperson for the organisation said, “the defeat of the OTR Bill is indeed a great sense of relief for the many innocent victims throughout South Down. We put a lot of work into this made numerous representations to government officials, highlighting the difficulties of the proposed bill by many families. We are obviously delighted with the news that the bill has been thrown out in Parliament last week.”

They went on to say, “However, we are somewhat disappointed in the Secretary of State’s remarks following the announcement on Wednesday, whenever he suggested that it was only because Sinn Fein rejected the Bill, that the Government decided to through it out. This concerns us as this statement by him suggests once again that terrorist representation over rules everything”.

In conclusion the spokesperson said, “ its obvious that the Secretary of State on behalf of the Government, will indeed in the future reopen the debate on the on-the-runs and it is imperative that the decent law abiding people of Northern Ireland speak up and reject any proposal which allows terrorist back onto our streets without a proper trial. We in South Down Action for Healing Wounds, will continue with our campaign and oppose any proposal which would allow perpetrators of crime back onto our streets free of charge”.