Ulster Unionist Justice spokesperson Tom Elliott has described the decision to reprimand the Police officer who was driving the Land rover which Gerry Kelly clung to in north Belfast last June as a “disgraceful” decision.
Mr Elliott said:
"The very idea that the Police officer driving the Land rover which Gerry Kelly attempted to halt in Carrick Hill last summer could face any form of reprimand is an absolute disgrace.
“I welcome the commitment by the Police Federation to ‘defend the officer to the hilt’. There is simply no excuse for the hounding of an officer who was simply doing his duty and attempting to get his colleagues out of the area in an orderly fashion.
“There is also no excuse for the on-going case against the Ministry of Defence and the Police by families of the IRA terrorists stopped so effectively at Loughgall by the SAS in 1988. Eight heavily armed terrorists lost their lives as they transported a bomb in a bid to blow up a police station, yet bizarrely the families of the dead terrorists are attempting to blame the SAS and the RUC!
“These cases merely add fuel to the anger and disquiet in society following the recent decision to hand Marian McGlinchey a suspended sentence after she admitted providing the mobile phone used to claim responsibility for the murder of two unarmed soldiers at Massereene barracks in Antrim.”