Responding to the publishing of the interim report on Operation Kenova, Ulster Unionist MLA Mike Nesbitt commented;

“This is a 200-page report that will take time to consider in detail. It is, however, important to recognise a number of things that the publishing of this interim report brings into focus.

“Firstly, there are many victims, and families of victims, who will never see this level of investigation that took place during the decades known as ‘The Troubles’. We in no way wish to lessen the pain and loss suffered by the families of those victims OP KENOVA investigated, every life lost is a tragedy, but we remain convinced that Northern Ireland could be where it is today without a single life being lost through this conflict. There was an alternative.

“No doubt there will be many commentators speculating on whether lives could have been saved during the time referenced by this investigation. If we measure this report based on pure statistics we will fail to learn lessons from it and continue to allow those who perpetrated the vast majority of these crimes to get away in the smoke.

“The police and security forces worked to save lives on a daily basis. The majority of this was through intelligence gathering, this included the use of HUMINT, which included STAKEKNIFE.  

“The Provisional IRA committed some of worst human rights abuses imaginable including sexual crime, child abuse, physiological torture, wholesale bombings, shootings and the systematic murder of men, women and children. We must never lose grasp of the facts; PIRA internal security unit murdered on the orders of their leadership. They did so with callousness and brutal efficiency, their victims discarded on the side of a lonely road, stripped naked with no dignity. In the end it achieved nothing but misery.”