The sentencing of Christopher Robinson at Belfast Crown Court for the murder of prison officer Adrian Ismay was the culmination of a grim episode which demonstrated again that violence achieves nothing other than grief and misery on all sides.
Robinson, aged 50, was given a 22-year term on Friday for his role in killing Mr Ismay close to his east Belfast home in 2016, which means that he will not be eligible to apply for release under licence until he is 72.
The victim worked in a training college, rather than a jail, and, as he was quite open about his job and did not routinely check under his vehicle, clearly did not consider himself to be under risk.
However, the court concluded that the defendant had set up the assassination after getting to know Mr Ismay while both were volunteering for the St John ambulance service.
We reported on Saturday that Robinson had developed a grudge against his colleague and chillingly approached three different republican splinter groups with information about him.
The first two declined to get involved, but the third, known as the New IRA, agreed to target Mr Ismay and eventually planted the bomb under his van which fatally injured him as he drove away from his house.
While Robinson denied any involvement throughout his trial, the device was forensically linked to a car with traces of Semtex which carried a Poppy Appeal sticker found to contain his DNA.
Mr Ismay's wife and children made victim impact statements to the court, and the judge said, `Only the hardest and coldest heart of stone would not be deeply affected reading them.'
If Robinson had firm political beliefs, he had every opportunity to engage at some level of the democratic process and change our society through purely constitutional means.
What he was not entitled to do was to kill an entirely innocent individual, and devastate his family and friends, in the pursuit of his chosen cause.
The loss of thousands of other human lives over the last 50 years and beyond, from all religions and none, was equally futile.
It is time for people of all traditions to accept that tragedies like the murder of Mr Ismay reflect the horrendous mistakes of our shared history and must never be repeated.
