Ian Acheson

The chilling attack on a Northern Ireland police officer

24 February 2023 12:58 am

An off-duty senior detective in Northern Ireland’s police service was ambushed last night by masked gunmen as he helped at…

The eradication of the victims of Enniskillen

10 November 2022 10:00 pm

In Northern Ireland, the dead are being eradicated. This week marks the 35th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a remembrance…

Northern Ireland's future isn't Catholic or Protestant

22 September 2022 9:48 pm

For the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, Catholics now outnumber Protestants. Census data on national identity and religious from…

Northern Ireland is descending back into sectarianism

18 August 2022 1:30 am

Nearly 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, the embers of sectarianism in Northern Ireland are still glowing bright. This…

Our prisons are woefully unprepared for Ali Harbi Ali

14 April 2022 8:52 pm

The Islamist terrorist Ali Harbi Ali will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of Sir…

The dog catcher, the terrorist and the dark history of Sinn Fein

12 February 2022 9:00 pm

The dead in the ground and those who put them there in the name of ideology do not rest easily…

How did the Texas synagogue terrorist slip through the cracks?

22 January 2022 9:00 pm

Just how many databases was Malik Faisal Akram on? It turns out that the 44-year-old Briton – who was shot…

What’s it like spending Christmas behind bars?

25 December 2021 6:00 pm

It’s customary these days for people to complain that Covid restrictions mean everyday life ‘is like living in a prison.’…

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and our broken child protection system

5 December 2021 6:00 pm

The official sentencing remarks on the short life and cruel death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes begin with this trigger warning from…

We must do more to protect our MPs

16 October 2021 10:59 pm

Sir David Amess’s backstory tells you much about his commitment to constituency politics that led to his cruel murder yesterday.…

The problem with having a woke prison service

29 September 2021 1:18 am

The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has said in the past that he wants prison to be ‘unpleasant.’ To that…

The case for isolating terrorists in prison is stronger than ever

31 July 2021 12:23 am

Watching last night’s ITV report from inside two of Britain’s highest security jails was an odd experience for me. The…

Boris's crime crackdown will be harder than he thinks

27 July 2021 11:50 pm

Can crime be beaten with a beaten down police force? The government certainly hopes so. Today, the Prime Minister launched…

The catalogue of failures that allowed Usman Khan to kill

29 May 2021 5:00 pm

The inquest into the murder of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt by Islamist terrorist Usman Khan has revealed a collision…

Why Sinn Fein can't really apologise for the IRA's atrocities

19 April 2021 10:00 pm

What are we to make of Sinn Fein’s latest experiment with the language of regret when it comes to the…

Northern Ireland's sink estates are fertile ground for fundamentalists

9 April 2021 12:14 am

Northern Ireland is routinely voted one of the happiest places to live in the UK. A few weeks ago, a…

No, jail staff shouldn't call prisoners 'residents'

10 March 2021 5:30 pm

What do you call someone in prison? An inmate? Prisoner? How about a ‘resident’? That’s how those locked up in…

Are loyalists plotting a return to violence?

5 March 2021 8:21 pm

What are we to make of Loyalist paramilitary groups withdrawing support for the Good Friday Agreement over the invidious trade…

Unionists should work with the Irish Taoiseach

18 February 2021 9:53 pm

Sinn Fein is not a normal political party. Don’t take my word for it, the charge is laid by the…

Britain's prisons are a breeding ground for Islamist terror

19 January 2021 6:00 pm

Was Reading terrorist Khairi Saadallah radicalised behind bars? What we do know is that locking Saadallah in HMP Bullingdon to develop…

The terror threat inside our prisons

8 October 2020 9:28 pm

Later today, two men will be sentenced for their part in the attempted murder of a prison officer at high…

Beware Sinn Fein’s Trojan horse

11 February 2020 11:20 pm

I got my first Irish passport a few months ago. It felt like a vaguely transgressive gesture because my primary…

Terror cells: how Britain’s prisons became finishing schools for extremists

7 February 2020 10:00 pm

Our prisons are fuelling radicalism, not fighting it

Can our prison system ‘cure’ convicted terrorists?

3 January 2020 4:11 am

We’ve just celebrated the birth of a refugee who went on to radicalise a group of fishermen and transform the…

Tommy Robinson is no martyr. Here’s how to stop him becoming one

12 July 2019 11:21 pm

We might not care for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon but we should care very much about what happens to him in prison…