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Sinn Fein Christmas card shock for Omagh family
By IAN STARRETT

THE sister of an Omagh bomb victim broke down in tears when she opened a Christmas card from Sinn Fein.
The families of the 29 people who were slaughtered in the Real IRA massacre in August 1998 yesterday accused the republican party of "gross in-sensitivity" after receiving cards from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and his deputy Pat Doherty.
A card, depicting white doves breaking free from the Maze prison, from Sinn Fein Vice President Pat Doherty arrived at the home of Michael Gallagher, whose 21 years old son Aidan perished in Northern Ireland's worst terrorist atrocity. It was opened by Mr Gallagher's youngest daughter Kathy.
Mr Gallagher said yesterday: "This was grossly insensitive of Doherty. My daughter Kathy opened the card which caused her to get upset.
"Words cannot articulate how much sorrow and anger this made my family feel. Christmas is a difficult time for my family because we miss Aidan so much.
"It beggars belief that Doherty would be so insensitive. This has done nothing for the Omagh families," added Mr Gallagher.
Sinn Fein came in for strong criticism also yesterday for a £5 calendar which they are selling through their official website and in a souvenir shop.
Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside said that the mixed messages on Sinn Fein's calendar confirmed his view that unionists should not return to the power-sharing Executive if the republican party were included.
"They are trying to work the ballot box and the Armalite, " he said.
"They can't give up the military wing because it is intertwined as part of their history and their structure."
One picture shows a grinning former Sinn Fein Northern Ireland Education Minister Martin McGuinness, self-confessed second in command of the IRA in Londonderry in 1972, while there is also a picture, for the month of June, in the calendar of IRA men firing a."bar-rack buster" mortar, similar to the one used to kill nine RUC officers in Newry in 1985.
For July the calendar has a picture of the Columbia Three, even though Sinn Fein and the IRA have denied any links with the three accused of terrorist offences in South America