Tory leader backs murderers
By Mick Naughton.
``We know they are going to get out, but what really grates is the
fact that they are still serving members of the British army.
They'll have maybe £60,000 in back money waiting for them when
they get out, and we know that their families have been assured
that they won't have to go back to Belfast, but that they'll
probably be posted to Germany.''
That's how human rights activist Paul O'Connor described the
latest moves on the part of the British establishment to secure
the early release of the two Scots Guards James Fisher and Mark
Wright convicted of shooting North Belfast Catholic teenager
Peter McBride in September 1992.
Now British Conservative leader William Hague has lent his
support for the soldiers' early release. Hague joins other
prominent British MPs to support Wright and Fisher, including
shadow social security minister Iain Duncan-Smith, himself a
former captain in the same regiment and former BBC journalist
Martin Bell MP. Speaking last weekend before the start of the
Scottish Conservative Party's annual conference in Glasgow, Tory
shadow spokesperson Duncan-Smith rejected the view of
commentators in Scotland who linked the killers with the peace
process.
Duncan-Smith warned at a press conference against the pair being
treated as ``political pawns'' stating, ``they are not political
prisoners and should not be treated as political prisoners,'' a
call backed by Phil Gallie, former Tory MP for Ayr and Ben
Wallace, candidate for West Aberdeenshire also a former captain
in the Scots Guards who served in the Six Counties at the same
time as Fisher and Wright.
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