OUTSPOKEN Home Office Minister David Maclean has foolishly fed the IRA propaganda machine with his remarks linking unconvicted terrorist suspect Roisin McAliskey with the "evil scum of the IRA."

As a law and order minister, Mr Maclean ought to know better than most that the hallowed premise of British justice is that any suspect is innocent until proved guilty.

And though they are taken out of context - careful reading of the now-leaked comments he made in a letter to a constituent about the case shows he was referring to IRA terrorists in general and not specifically to Ms McAliskey - his opinions still gift the IRA a juicy propaganda point. The effect is to have the pregnant Ms McAliskey, who is officially innocent while being held in Holloway Prison facing extradition to Germany on charges of bombing a British barracks, branded as guilty by a senior British justice minister - without trial.

And to supporters of Irish nationalism and to IRA sympathisers in America, where her case has become something of a cause clM- bre, that is precisely what they will prefer to think and expect of British justice - that it is unjust.

It is what the IRA wants them to think. And it is what Mr McLean unwisely lets them say.

Mr McLean may draw comfort from the fact that the vast majority of people will share his opinions of the IRA.

But if he had thought more carefully before he penned his remarks, he might have seen he would have ended up helping the IRA.

The justice minister must now lessen the damage by admitting his injudiciousness.

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