Downing Street said yesterday it recognised the early release from the Maze prison of the Brighton bomber, Mr Patrick Magee, was "very difficult to stomach" but defended the early release scheme as a stark reality of the Belfast Agreement.
Magee was convicted of setting off a bomb in an attempt to murder the former prime minister, now Baroness Thatcher, and the entire Cabinet at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where they were based during the Conservative Party conference in October 1984. Five people were killed in the blast, including the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry and Roberta Wakeham, wife of the then Tory chief whip and now chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lord Wakeham. Thirty-four people were injured.
A Downing Street spokesman said early prisoner releases were "unpalatable" and "the most difficult" aspect of the Belfast Agreement, but if they had not been written into the agreement no deal would have been reached.
The offices of Baroness Thatcher and Lord Tebbit, who was injured in the attack and whose wife was paralysed, indicated they would not be commenting on Magee's release.
The First Minister, Mr David Trimble, speaking in London, said the decision to release Mr Magee highlighted the contrast between the beginning of disarmament of the KLA in Kosovo and the failure of Northern Ireland paramilitaries to begin decommissioning.
Condemning Mr Magee's release and the continuation of the early release scheme, the Conservative spokesman for Northern Ireland, Mr Andrew Mackay, accused the Prime Minister of not implementing the agreement in full. "It is being implemented to the extent that prisoners are being released early; it is not being implemented by an end to violence and a start to decommissioning of illegally held weapons," he said.
Minutes after Mr Magee's release from the Maze prison, the former Conservative home secretary Mr Michael Howard described it as a disgrace. He said he held grave reservations about the early release of any prisoner. In the case of terrorist prisoners there should be no more releases until weapons were surrendered.
"The paramilitaries resolutely refuse to surrender their guns or their bombs," he said. "If they genuinely intended to set aside violence, what conceivable reasons could there be for them to continue to have access to these weapons?"