WHATEVER your views on the death penalty, Timothy McVeigh is now dead. In his last hours on earth he must have bemoaned the fact that he had not committed his act of terrorism in his ancestral homeland Northern Ireland.

For not only would be still be alive, but he would have been freed under the terms of the Belfast Agreement and quite possibly would have been a minister or at least an elected member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

D PEARSON, Rawstorne Street, Blackburn.