Times
By David Lister
IAN PAISLEY said yesterday that Sinn Fein had committed a sin through the IRA’s alleged involvement in the £26.5 million robbery from the Northern Bank in Belfast and urged the Government to punish republicans.
Speaking after a meeting with Tony Blair, Mr Paisley gave a blunt assessment of the chances of a deal to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland. He said: “I think there have to be penalties. I resent the fact that at the moment it is held over the heads of people that are trying to carry out democratic politics. They are going to suffer rather than the people who actually committed the sin.”
Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, told the Commons that the IRA’s alleged role in last month’s bank heist, the biggest cash robbery in Britain, was “deeply damaging” to the peace process.
Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein’s chairman, said that the party would not “take lectures from any British government on criminality.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-1436278,00.html