Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson has threatened to resign unless there is a judicial inquiry review into the collapse of the trial of a man suspected of carrying out a 1982 Irish Republican Army bombing in London.
Robinson said the British government had kept him in the dark on the issue of secret amnesty letters given to fugitive suspects - the issue that caused the high profile Hyde Park bombing trial to be aborted.
A judge on Tuesday ruled that John Downey, 62, should not be prosecuted for the attack after it emerged he had received an official letter in 2007 assuring him he would not face prosecution if he re-entered the United Kingdom.
The letters were part of the 1998 Good Friday agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
Downey was charged with killing four cavalry soldiers in the Hyde Park bombing by the IRA. He was arrested last May at London Gatwick Airport while en route to Greece.
A visibly furious Robinson, who has headed Northern Ireland's devolved administration since 2008, said he was "incandescent with rage" that he did not know about the letters.
"I am not prepared to be the first minister of a government that is kept in the dark" by London on matters relating to Northern Ireland, he told BBC television.
"I want a full judicial inquiry into all of these matters so that we can see who knew, when they knew, what they knew.
"I want all of the letters rescinded," he added.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said in parliament it was shocking that a "despicable mistake" meant Downey would not face trial.
The government's chief legal adviser, Dominic Grieve, England's attorney-general, told parliament Downey should never have received the letter.
Such letters of assurance have been sent out to 187 so-called "on-the-runs", living outside British jurisdictions, who sought clarification on their status following the 1998 Northern Irish peace accords between its broadly Protestant British and Catholic Irish communities.
