Facebook insult to Moat's victims

It was not David Cameron who was in the wrong when he called for a webpage set up in "tribute" to fugitive gunman and murderer Raoul Moat to be taken down, but Facebook for refusing to accept its moral obligations to society by permanently removing the page.

This is not a freedom of speech issue – but a matter of human decency.

Here are some facts for those misguided and, frankly, sick individuals who gained some kind of pleasure from Moat's actions and the week-long manhunt that resulted in the former nightclub bouncer shooting himself

a week ago.

The steroid addict had served a prison sentence for assault. He murdered an innocent man and left his former girlfriend fighting for her life in hospital. And then he shot, and seriously wounded, an unarmed policeman and father who has been left blinded – and who will have to live with this disability for the rest of his life.

They were not the actions of a man who deserves the public's respect. They were the consequences of a deranged individual who chose to take out his personal grievances on society as a whole, and who would have gone on to maim, and potentially murder, other innocent people if he had not been successfully cornered by police marksmen.

Of course, this case raises disturbing issues, like the breakdown in communication between the Prison Service and Northumbria Police when Moat was freed from custody – and whether the firing of two Tasers by West Yorkshire Police precipitated the killer to take his own life and, thereby, absolve himself from facing up to the consequences of his actions in a court of law.

There is also the tape where Moat claims the authorities ignored his mental health issues.

These are not matters for Facebook – they are matters for the IPCC inquiry now underway. What Facebook needs to do is review its guidelines in light of the offence that this deplorable site caused. Moat's many victims, and those tasked with upholding the rule of law, deserve nothing less.