First Minister’s ‘sorry’ branded ‘nauseating’ in wake of inquest findings on Kingsmill massacre

FIRST Minister Michelle O’neill has said she is sorry for every life lost during the Troubles, including the Kingsmill atrocity.

Sinn Fein’s northern leader said the Kingsmill victims’ families “deserve truth and justice” — despite the IRA and Sinn Fein refusing for 10 years to participate in an inquest, which ended only last week.

Ms O’neill was speaking yesterday during the opening of the J&J Mcconnell’s Distillery and Visitor Experience at Crumlin Road Gaol.

Her comments come after an inquest into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre found that it was an “overtly sectarian attack by the IRA”.

The sole survivor, Alan Black, is now calling for a public inquiry into the murders. Shot 18 times by IRA terrorists, Mr Black was left for dead among 10 of his slain workmates.

The men were ordered from a bus in Co Armagh and shot on the roadside “for no other reason than they were Protestant”, Coroner Brian Sherrard said, branding claims that the IRA were not involved as “a lie”.

He added: “The IRA failed to engage with the inquest. There has been no acknowledgement by the IRA of the utter wrongness of the atrocity, its impact on those bereaved or the damage caused to the entire community.”

No one has ever been convicted in connection with the killings, which were admitted by a group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force.

Asked yesterday about the outcome of the inquest, Ms O’neill said she was “sorry for every loss of life”.

“Let me again be categorical. I am sorry for every loss of life throughout the conflict, but my job as a political leader of today is to build towards the future and try to help to heal the wounds of the past.

“Doesn’t the Kingsmill judgment very much underline why we need to deal with the past properly? And why the legislation the British Government has brought forward is riding coach and horses through the desires and needs of all families?

“That includes the Kingsmill families, who deserve truth and justice, who deserve a public inquiry and who deserve answers.

“But for my job as a leader of today — I speak for Sinn Fein, as First

‘Doesn’t the Kingsmill judgment underline why we need to deal with the past properly?’

Minister in front of you today — I am sorry for every loss of life, including those in the Kingsmill disaster.”

TUV party chairman and councillor Keith Ratcliffe said “the Jesuitical words from O’neill about the Kingsmill inquest will cut no ice with those with any knowledge of the massacre”.

He said it was “nauseating” for Ms O’neill to say that the victims’ families deserve truth and justice “when the IRA who she continues to defend continue to maintain the fiction that they were not involved”.

“To utter such words after a finding that Sinn Fein and the wider republican movement had failed to cooperate with the inquest is reprehensible,” he said.