Sinn Féin has been accused of “disgraceful” public commentary after the death of former senior IRA man Brendan “Bik” McFarlane.
DUP MLA Phillip Brett told the Northern Ireland Assembly that there was “not a scintilla” of remorse from the republican party over McFarlane’s past violent actions.
McFarlane, known for taking part in the biggest escape in UK prison history, died after a short illness on Friday.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald paid tribute to him as “a great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland”.
Mr Brett told the Assembly on Monday that the public commentary from Sinn Féin after McFarlane’s death had been “disgraceful”.
He referred to McFarlane’s role in a gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on Belfast’s Shankill Road in 1975, which killed five people.
He said: “Three cowardly terrorists, led by McFarlane, set out to murder and maim their Protestant neighbours.
“They arrived at a packed bar, where they opened fire indiscriminately and planted a 10lb bomb at the entrance to ensure the maximum number of casualties among innocent Protestant men, women and children.
“The IRA, in its actions, killed five people, the youngest of whom, Linda Boyle, was just 17 years old, and injured 50 others.”
McFarlane was subsequently jailed but was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the Maze Prison in Co Antrim in 1983.
Mr Brett said: “In all the public pronouncements from Sinn Fein eulogising Mr McFarlane, there was not a single sentence, not a scintilla, of a ‘sorry’ for the victims of his evil deeds.
“The Sinn Féin member for North Belfast (Gerry Kelly), who represents the very place where the bomb went off, managed to say in his remarks that Mr McFarlane did all that he could in the struggle for Irish unity.
“Did that struggle include the murder of an innocent 17-year-old girl?
“The leader of Sinn Féin described him as a ‘great patriot’.
“Do great patriots plant a 10lb bomb at the entrance to a bar to tear the heart out of the Shankill Road and then celebrate the murder of five people?”
Mr Brett added: “I was raised never to speak ill of the dead, and I recognise that a family is hurting, but my community and my constituency hurt every single day as a result of Mr McFarlane’s actions.
“Sinn Féin’s failure even to acknowledge that fact is nothing short of a disgrace.
“No amount of whitewashing or saying that the IRA’s actions were justified will ever stop my party calling out the rank hypocrisy of the members opposite.”
Last week Mr Kelly said McFarlane was a “republican activist all his life” who “gave all that he had to the struggle for a united Ireland”.
McFarlane’s funeral will take place in Belfast on Tuesday.
