Hopes that interim Kenova report marks 'another step towards truth' for families
Hopes have been voiced that the interim report from Operation Kenova represents "another step towards truth" for bereaved families.
The long-running investigation probed the activities of the Army's agent Stakeknife within the Provisional IRA during Northern Ireland's troubled past.
Stakeknife operated in the IRA's notorious internal security unit which abducted, tortured and murdered those it accused of being informers.
The interim report from Kenova released on Friday found that more lives were probably lost than saved through Stakeknife.
A final report is set to be published later this year.
Alliance MLA Nuala McAllister said it had been a "long and difficult journey" for bereaved families seeking the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
"I hope this interim report is another step towards that truth," she said.
"The report and its revelations are a damning indictment of how the security service ran agents during the Troubles. Saving lives must and should have been paramount.
"I look forward to the final report but this once again points towards the utter folly of the UK Government's deeply flawed Legacy Act. Truth and justice, or at least the possibility of it, is paramount in our society. To take that away from families is beyond contempt."
Ulster Unionist MLA Mike Nesbitt said the 200-page report will take some time to consider in detail, and added his sympathies for the bereaved families.
"No doubt there will be many commentators speculating on whether lives could have been saved during the time referenced by this investigation," he said.
"If we measure this report based on pure statistics we will fail to learn lessons from it and continue to allow those who perpetrated the vast majority of these crimes to get away in the smoke.
"The police and security forces worked to save lives on a daily basis. The majority of this was through intelligence gathering. The Provisional IRA committed some of worst human rights abuses imaginable including... wholesale bombings, shootings and the systematic murder of men, women and children.
"We must never lose grasp of the facts; PIRA internal security unit murdered on the orders of their leadership. They did so with callousness and brutal efficiency, their victims discarded on the side of a lonely road, stripped naked with no dignity. In the end it achieved nothing but misery."
Meanwhile, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood described the report as setting out "in brutal detail the litany of horrors committed by the IRA internal security unit, sanctioned by the IRA leadership and allowed to happen by the British government and security services".
"Apologies will never be enough but it should at least be the starting point for the Republican movement and the British government - specific and sincere statements of regret for the actions undertaken by their agents and uncovered by the Kenova team," he said.
"Vague or general sadness are, I am afraid, deficient and will be viewed as such by victims and survivors.
"Then there must be a process to ensure that this evil can never happen again and that, wherever possible and wherever wanted, there will be justice outcomes for victims."
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said the "British state must own up to the fact that it sanctioned murder for its own nefarious ends".
"Collusion with paramilitary death squads and state-sponsored murderers like Stakeknife was never about saving lives. It was always about defending the political, economic and military aims of the British establishment.
"I commend those bereaved families who forced the investigation into Stakeknife's murderous activities and into the vicious collusion policies of the British state."