Ulster Unionist Justice spokesperson Tom Elliott MLA has said he is appalled by the comments made by the “writer and broadcaster” Jude Collins. Mr Collins, a frequent contributor on the BBC, said in a recent blog that Sean Kelly was ‘’not guilty of the premeditated killing of the ten people [in the Shankill Road bombing in October 1993]’’ but was guilty of the premeditated intention to kill UDA people and failed.

The Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA said:

"This is not the first time that Jude Collins has proved himself completely out of touch with reality, and indeed one of his previous blog articles asked the question “was the death of Mary Travers murder?”

There is no excuse for what happened on that day or on the Shankill or many other similar occasions, like the Enniskillen Bomb, when innocent people were killed by the IRA. For a “writer and broadcaster” to try and justify this atrocity is repulsive to the vast majority of people.

 “He completely fails to mention that to set out to deliver a bomb with a short fuse, to a target on a busy shopping street such as the Shankill Road on a Saturday afternoon, was to accept the inevitable consequence that even if the IRA had been able to target UDA leadership, civilians were certain to be killed and sacrificed to achieve that goal. Indeed given the IRA’s past history of “own goals” whereby terrorists were frequently blown up by their own bombs, there was every likelihood of the device exploding en route to the intended target.

“The bottom line is that when an individual transports an inherently unstable improvised explosive device through busy city streets on a Saturday afternoon, they can have no degree of certainty as to when or where that device is liable to detonate.   

"Jude Collins should withdraw these comments and not provide any cover for these murders by Mr Begley and Mr Kelly. I don't believe any right thinking people would accept that this heinous act on the Shankill Road was anything other than murder."