Would CIA allow this scrawny malevolent coward to walk free?

And even 43 years on the stench gets more repulsive and rotten by the month.

Former IRA 'explosives expert' Michael Christopher Hayes crawled out of his hole in south Dublin this week to speak to the BBC.

In one of the most repugnant and totally gutless interviews ever witnessed on national television, Hayes admits he personally defused a third bomb on Birmingham's Hagley Road which was meant to go off with the other two at the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs on that fateful November night in 1974.

He tells the reporter the bombs were planted by two people but refuses to name who was responsible and fails to rule himself out, saying he would rather die than be an informer.

He admits the explosives were made of powerful gelignite, saying: "I specialised in explosives. I knew what I was doing."

But then has the gall to suggest that it was never intended to kill anyone – blaming telephone boxes which were either broken or being used and that there was an eight minute delay before police were warned of the bombs' locations.

In an act of utter contempt he then offers his 'heartfelt sympathy' and hopes God will bring the victims' families 'closure'.

There is one person who could bring the families of the 21 victims closure, Mr Hayes – you – you pitiful excuse of a man.

Yet even in 2017 this is not the first time his connections to the pub bombings have been known.

By his own admission he was arrested and questioned by West Midlands Police over the blasts in 1974 but was released.

Then in 1990, he was was named in a landmark Granada TV programme as one of the men who placed the bombs in the two pubs.

And in November last year he confessed to The Sun that he was behind the Brighton bomb aimed at killing Margaret Thatcher. In the same interview he first makes the claims about the Birmingham bombings recycled this week by the BBC.

The question has to be – as it has been for the last four decades – what the heck are West Midlands Police doing?

Imagine if this atrocity had happened in the United States.

The CIA or FBI wouldn't be sat on their hands watching these sickening interviews on TV.

They'd be banging down the door of the Irish authorities, extraditing Hayes, interrogating him, and putting him on trial.

What if this was to happen again in the UK? Would the authorities so blatantly turn a blind eye to someone claiming to be a key part of the plot?

Why is he entitled to untouched liberty?

The Birmingham pub bombings is the worst terrorist outrage to hit the West Midlands. In addition to the 21 killed, hundreds were maimed and left traumatised for life.

This was a barbaric assault on innocents whose only crime was to go out for a drink after work on a Thursday night.

Yet the public of the West Midlands have been witness to an appalling – and unprecedented – injustice.

Even now the victims' families have had to fight tooth and nail to get fair funding for the new inquests while the police earmark £1m of taxpayers' money to represent their own interests.

Despite the scandal of the Birmingham Six, there still appears to be little appetite for justice from the Establishment.

These re-opened inquests will not name the suspects after the coroner said 'the perpetrator issue' is not within its 'scope'.

How can this be the case?

How does the coroner expect to establish the facts if he omits crucial details of who the perpetrators are believed to be? – especially if they are still alive and could be called upon.

But more pertinently, and disturbingly, all of what Mr Hayes has said must already be known to the police and the security services.

So the question is why has there been a wilful failure to investigate this case?

The police and security services are the very people we trust to protect us from terrorism and bring criminals to justice.

Yet such blatant and apparent lines of inquiry have not been followed.

And why are the authorities so reluctant to speak about the case? Why are they protecting those responsible?

Michael Christopher Hayes says he is not a murderer and that he can peacefully sleep at night.

That may be true in the eyes of law – but as long as he keeps his evil secrets to himself he is nothing but a scrawny malevolent coward.