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| Ex-prisoners can 'join police' | Ex-prisoners can 'join police' |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Prisoners freed under the Good Friday Agreement may be able to join the police service, the DUP has said. | |
| However, MP Gregory Campbell said it could only happen "provided they demonstrate they have repented". | However, MP Gregory Campbell said it could only happen "provided they demonstrate they have repented". |
| He was asked on BBC Radio Ulster's Nolan Show if his party's decision to allow former paramilitaries to join the DUP should be extended to the police. | He was asked on BBC Radio Ulster's Nolan Show if his party's decision to allow former paramilitaries to join the DUP should be extended to the police. |
| DUP member and former prisoner Gary Blair has disagreed, saying a "conviction should rule everyone out". | |
| Mr Campbell said the prisoners would have to show they did not advocate criminality. | |
| 'Repentant' | |
| If they did, he said, they could be considered for membership of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. | If they did, he said, they could be considered for membership of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. |
| "They have to demonstrate that they are repentant and they have to show that they do not advocate that sort of activities," he said. | "They have to demonstrate that they are repentant and they have to show that they do not advocate that sort of activities," he said. |
| "If so, they could then be considered, only if they demonstrate that, if they don't, they should not." | "If so, they could then be considered, only if they demonstrate that, if they don't, they should not." |
| Gary Blair, a spokesman for the DUP's Ballymoney branch, said former prisoners should not be permitted to join the police service. | |
| "A conviction is a conviction and it should rule everyone out. I would never put myself forward to join the PSNI," he said. | |
| 'Credible officers' | |
| "If the police want to be a credible police force, then I think they need to have credible officers and obviously people who broke the law repeatedly don't have that credibility and I include myself in that." | |
| Sinn Fein assembly member Philip McGuigan said the DUP had "tried to create the myth that they had no relationship whatever with unionist paramilitaries". | |
| "Gary Blair, the individual convicted of murdering my party colleague Malachy Carey in Ballymoney in 1992, is currently a leading DUP figure in Ian Paisley's constituency and has indeed led a campaign to see those jailed for the LVF sectarian double murder in Poyntzpass released," he said. | |
| "It has also recently emerged that former DUP councillor and assembly member George Seawright was a member of the UVF." |