Phone was used by Real IRA to admit responsibility for killings of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in 2009
Unionists have questioned the suspended sentence handed down to the Old Bailey bomber Marian McGlinchey for providing a mobile phone to the killers of two soldiers.
The phone was used to admit responsibility for the Real IRA double murder of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March 2009.
McGlinchey, 59, who is in ill health, admitted obtaining and supplying the phone to the Real IRA and aiding and abetting the addressing of a meeting in support of terrorism. The latter charge related to a Real IRA rally in Derry in 2011 where she held up a script for a masked speaker.
At Belfast crown court on Tuesday she was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for three years.
Tom Elliott, the Ulster Unionist party's justice spokesman, said: "This sentence comes very soon after the news that McGlinchey's fellow Old Bailey bomber Gerry Kelly received a warning for obstructing the police by clinging on to a police Land Rover last summer.
"The treatment of McGlinchey and Kelly is in stark contrast to the heavy sentences handed down to many non-republicans in recent months and I fully understand the perception of many in the community that the justice system is being very, very lenient towards republicans."
He said he would press Northern Ireland's lord chief justice for an explanation of this "serious and significant unfairness".
In 1973 McGlinchey – then called Marian Price – was jailed for her role in a bomb attack outside the Old Bailey in London earlier the same year. She and her sister Dolours fought a bitter campaign to be repatriated back to Ireland to serve out their sentence.