NI Special Branch Ballistic Unit being investigated.
Posted: Wed May 13, 2015 12:10 pm
Interesting article, but at the risk of being contentious I'd suggest that if those firearms had not been returned the subsequent murders would have still occurred with the culprit drawing a different firearm from the armoury.
Whilst putting any form of weapon in the hands of known terrorists is probably not a good idea I can imagine there was significant intelligence value in doing so, especially when denying those terrorists access to small percentage of their arms dump is unlikely to make much of a difference.
Although I sympathise with the pain that the victims families will be feeling at this news.