IT MAY well stick in the craw of those believing in pure justice that British taxpayers have handed nearly £40,000 to the relatives of the three IRA terrorists killed by the SAS in the so-called Death on the Rock shootings in Gibraltar in 1988.

But this pay-out and last September's verdict of the European Court of Human Rights, which triggered it with a ruling that the killings were wrongful acts, both need to be qualified with the probity of common sense.

To begin with, this payment made by the government to the families of the three terrorists is not compensation or any financial form of apology for the deed - and none is due.

It is simply to cover the legal costs and expenses that the relatives incurred in bringing the case to the European Court and which, as the "loser", the government is lawfully bound to pay.

And, however much the government and others may dispute the court's ruling, none can credibly protest at this pay-out without plunging into the paradox of pleading belief in justice, but not in the courts that administer it.

In short, we are subscribers to the European Court system - frequently mistaken by Euro-phobes as another meddlesome arm of the EU, when it is not - and must abide by its findings. And we must pay up when we "lose."

It is in the light of that upright sentiment, rather than the one of instinctive umbrage, that its verdict must be examined.

For while the court decided - notably by a most narrow margin - that the "human rights" of the victims, Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann, were infringed when they were shot and killed, it did so with the luxury of hindsight.

That was in the subsequent knowledge that these terrorists had not, as suspected, left a car filled with explosives in Gibraltar with the aim of killing British troops, and that they were not in possession of a remote-control device designed to trigger such an explosion - facts that the SAS were not armed with.

But it did not deny the fact that these were bomb-plot terrorists on "active service."

And, thus, the court tempered its verdict in regard to the infringement of human rights with the correct conclusion that Britain was not operating a shoot-to-kill policy - so depriving the victims of the stamp of legality for their evidently malevolent activities.

In short, the common sense verdict was that these were terrorists up to no good.

That fact remains unchanged by the technical, narrow and hollow "victory," now sealed with this pay-out to their relatives vainly seeking martyrdom for the unholy.

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