While the loss of every life during the conflict of the last 50 years and beyond must be equally condemned, it should be accepted that a particular spotlight will be placed on killings linked in any way to the forces of the state.
The slightest suggestion that the authorities, rather than carrying out their duty to protect ordinary citizens, might have colluded in or be directly responsible for innocent deaths needs to be fully investigated, despite all the efforts of Boris Johnson to prohibit further prosecutions
However, it is still an inescapable fact that the vast majority of murders were carried out by republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, with a significant number failing to result in a conviction or in many cases even a charge.
One of the most appalling atrocities in this category was the Enniskillen Poppy Day bomb of 1987, when an IRA explosion killed 11 people, with a 12th dying after he was left in a coma for 13 years, and a further 63 left with serious injuries.
As we reported last week, some of the survivors of the outrage have finally decided to take a High Court action in an attempt to hold the police responsible for their failures on a number of fronts over the last 34 years.
The victims have issued writs seeking damages against the chief constable, as part of a wider effort to establish the truth about the circumstances surrounding the bombing and also to specifically find out why the building known as the St Michael's Reading Rooms where the device was placed was not searched in advance.
James Mullan, whose parents William and Nessie Mullan were among those killed because they were standing in close proximity to the blast, told The Detail website; `If that is not a dereliction of duty, what else would one call it ?'
There is little expectation that any individual will ever be held legally accountable for the 1987 slaughter, but it is beyond doubt that the families at the very least deserve to be given a full explanation of the sequence of events which made it possible.
It will also be widely agreed that when the hatred which caused all the murders of the Troubles fades away, it is the Christian response of the late Gordon Wilson, who lost his daughter Marie Wilson in Enniskillen, and subsequently said `I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge,’ which will endure.
