Mr Middleton said,
“This mirrors the attack of October 1990 when the IRA held Patsy Gillespie’s wife and children at gunpoint and forced the 43-year-old to drive a bomb into a checkpoint at Coshquin. It was sickening then and it is sickening today. It was wrong then and it is wrong today.
I was on the ground all night. I commend the community centre staff for rallying to help families. Babies who needed milk. Children who needed somewhere to sleep. Nurses coming off shift who needed somewhere to lie down. The disruption has been incredible but so has the community response.
We need political leadership to say that terrorism was wrong in 1990 and it is wrong in 2022. Those who justify the violence of the past and say there “was no alternative” are misleading this generation and sanitising brutal sectarian violence.”
