Sir, - The Americans give as their reason for bombing Afghanistan the refusal of the Taiban government to hand over the suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.
After 1970, persons alleged to have killed members of the security forces and civilians in Northern Ireland sought refuge in this State.
Our judges, citing British precedents, declared that they could not be extradited to the United Kingdom because their offences were politically motivated. A high-powered team of Irish judges and lawyers headed by the late Mr Justice Brian Walsh declared that it would be contrary to international law and therefore to our Constitution to legislate for their extradition.
Like the Taliban in recent days, the Irish government offered to try suspects before our own courts for offences committed outside the State.
Later, after we had legislated for extradition, we refused to extradite Fahter Patrick Ryan because the British Prime Minister had, like President Bush with bin Laden, expressed the view that he was guilty; and for that reason our Attorney General believed Father Ryan could not get a fair trial in the United Kingdom.
What would we have felt if the British Government had bombed Dublin and killed civilians in exercise of its right of self-defence under the United Nations Charter on the basis that those who harbour terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves? - Yours, etc.,
Charles Lysaght, Strand Road, Dublin 4.