"THE thought that our loved ones are dead because of the actions of others is very hard to understand," the widow of murdered garda Jerry McCabe said last night.
Speaking at a memorial service for the September 11th victims in the Augustinian Church in Limerick, Mrs Ann McCabe said: "For the world, the date September 11th exerts the powerful emotive force. It has been termed the day that changed the world. Those horrific television images have gone around the world and have demonstrated on an appalling scale the damage that politically motivated terrorism can cause to the innocent and the unwary."
She added: "For me September 11th has a particularly personal meaning as, in my life and that of my family, another date - June 7th, 1996 - is a date that will be forever engraved on my mind as a point of transition, a date which ushered tragedy into my life as the forces of terrorism killed my husband as he was doing his duty working as a garda in Adare in Co Limerick. So I can use those trite words 'I know how you feel' and mean them because I do.
"Death comes to us all and September 11th and June 7th have shown us all the dangers of political terrorism and the need for vigilance and clarity in our dealings with those who use the weapons of terror instead of the democratic tools of persuasion, argument and debate," she said.