Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR) said it was important that IRA victims' voices were heard as the 25th anniversary of the hunger strike approaches next month.

FAIR director Willie Frazer told the Sunday Tribune: A lot of romantic mythology has developed around these terrorists. They are often seen as some sort of war heroes. They were nothing of the kind. They were in jail for causing death and destruction all over Northern Ireland. Some of them had the blood of over a dozen men, women and children on their hands.

It's become acceptable for people who aren't republican, and who claim they're antiviolence, to describe the hunger strikers as noble. It's conveniently forgotten why these men were put in jail. To support the hunger strikers now is no different than supporting the Omagh bombers."

FAIR's booklet will include a chapter on each of the seven IRA and three INLA hungerstrikers who died, detailing the attacks they carried out.

Photographs of the prisoners, and of their victims, will also be published. The booklet will be distributed in Ireland, Britain, the US, Spain and Israel.

Frazer claimed that Francis Hughes from Bellaghy, Co Derry, the second hungerstriker to die, had killed up to 15 people, including a child and a grandmother. ?Bobby Sands' claim to fame was that he bombed a furniture store in Dunmurry. Wasn't that a big, brave act? How can people celebrate Bobby Sands and then condemn those who would plant bombs in shops across our towns and cities today?" asked Frazer.

When asked if his opinions were insensitive to the hunger strikers' families, Frazer said:

Do the hunger strikers' families not think what their sons did to my community was disgraceful? None of these families stopped their sons dying so they've no right to get all sensitive now."