Statement by TUV chairman Ivor McConnell:

“A few weeks ago I highlighted plans to commemorate IRA commander and Nazi ally Sean Russell with the unveiling of a statue in Dublin.

“At the time I challenged Sinn Fein to clarify what their attitude was towards a man who had launched a bombing campaign on the UK mainland in 1939 and collaborated with the Nazis in the hope of uniting Ireland at the point of a SS bayonet.

“Well thanks to a repot in An Phoblacht we now all know what the Republican movement thinks of Russell the Fascist.

“Sinn Fein/IRA continues to be offended by people wearing the poppy in order to remember those who died in the struggle for freedom against Nazi Germany. However, their group leader in Dublin, Larry O’Toole, had no problem laying a wreath at a memorial to a man who travelled to Berlin at the start of the Second World War in order to establish links with the Nazis and died while returning to the Free State onboard a German submarine.

“The report in the Sinn Fein Weekly makes no mention of Russell’s links with the Nazis. This should not come as a surprise. Sinn Fein/IRA excels at airbrushing out the inconvenient facts which upset the romantic myth which they attempt to weave around the less than glorious figures who populate Republican history”.