The Ulster Unionist Party’s Justice Spokesperson, Doug Beattie MC MLA, has urged the DUP to join with his Party in opposition to the creation of a Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), which would be a parallel police force and set up to focus mainly on the activities of former police officers and soldiers, and not on the terrorists.

Doug Beattie MC MLA said:

“The Ulster Unionist Party spotted the inherent dangers in the Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) from the day and hour it was first proposed, having been agreed by the DUP and Sinn Fein as part of the Stormont House Agreement.

“We warned anyone who was prepared to listen that the HIU was fundamentally and fatally flawed. We could see the inevitable biased results which would be produced by an investigatory process that would trawl through UK state archives to build cases for the prosecution of former soldiers and RUC officers, whilst of course being unable to access any equivalent records of the terrorist groups responsible for 90 per cent of Troubles related deaths.

“This can - and most certainly will – only feed into the lies and propaganda of the well-funded apologists for the IRA who, having lost the battle against the security forces on the streets and fields of Northern Ireland during the Troubles – now seek to rewrite history to portray the State and its police and soldiers as the villains of the piece.

“As it stands now, the DUP has very late in the day - and on the cusp of an election – finally realised the iniquity of the charge of ‘non-criminal police misconduct’ which we have been warning about since the legislation was first produced, and under which even deceased RUC officers, would have their reputations destroyed even though no criminal offence has been committed.

“However, the DUP’s own General Election manifesto still calls for ‘a new investigatory team with full police powers’ which is another way of saying the HIU. Once again I urge the DUP to join the Ulster Unionist Party in rejecting the HIU in its entirety. It simply has to be stopped in order to avert the betrayal of the men and women who bravely put on uniforms and stood between the terrorists and the terrorised.”