Hain defends Kelly jail release

Shankill bomber Sean Kelly has been released

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has defended his decision to release the Shankill bomber Sean Kelly.

The move, on the eve of the IRA's ordering an end to its armed campaign, was strongly condemned by unionists.

Kelly - one of two IRA men who left a bomb in a Shankill Road fish shop in 1993 which killed nine civilians - was returned to jail last month.

Mr Hain said the grounds on which he suspended Kelly's early release licence had changed.

He said the IRA statement "created a new situation and thereby changed the context of my original decision to suspend Sean Kelly's licence".

"The government accepts that the statement by the IRA is intended to express an end to paramilitary activity and criminality," he said.

"Having seen the statement I judged that it materially affected the evidence that I would have submitted to the Sentence Review Commissioners."

He said that since he no longer considered it appropriate that his licence should be revoked "it would have been wrong to keep him in prison until the SRC had made a formal decision".

Kelly killed Alan McBride's wife and father-in-law

A man whose wife was among the victims of freed IRA bomber Sean Kelly hit out at the government's decision.

Alan McBride said Kelly's release would only heighten unionist and Protestant scepticism.

Mr McBride, 40, whose wife and father-in-law were among those killed when Kelly's bomb exploded prematurely claimed he should never be back on the streets.

"Just seeing him out sends a chill up my spine," he said.

"It represents another concession to republicanism and because of it this IRA statement will not have the significant impact on the unionist community it might, just might, otherwise have had."

His wife Sharon and father-in-law John Frizell were among the nine people killed in the attack in October 1993.

Kelly's IRA accomplice, Thomas Begley, was also killed, in one of the most notorious atrocities of the Troubles.

Kelly was given nine life sentences but was released under the Good Friday Agreement in 2000.

The Northern Ireland secretary then ordered his re-arrest last month amid suspicions by security chiefs he had again become involved in terrorism.