Northern Ireland court finds soldier not guilty of murder over Bloody Sunday killings
Story by Reuters
Belfast, Northern Ireland (Reuters) — A Belfast court on Thursday found a British soldier not guilty of murder in the only trial of a member of the British armed forces over the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” killings of 13 unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland.
The British government in 2010 apologized for the “unjustified and unjustifiable” killings, when members of a British army regiment opened fire in the mainly Irish nationalist city of Londonderry (Derry) in one of the defining moments of Northern Ireland’s recent history.
But all efforts to prosecute soldiers have failed.
The soldier, who cannot be identified legally and is known as Soldier F, was found not guilty of killing two men and trying to kill five others.
Bloody Sunday became one of the defining moments of the Troubles, three decades of sectarian violence involving nationalists seeking a united Ireland, unionists wanting Northern Ireland to remain a province of the United Kingdom, and British forces. A 1998 peace deal largely ended the bloodshed.
Soldier F was not called to give evidence during the one-month trial that was heard without a jury.
Defense lawyers did not call any witnesses and said that the core of the case, military statements taken over 50 years ago, were manifestly unreliable, with no independent supporting evidence offered to back the prosecution case.
Earlier in the trial the court heard a short statement Soldier F gave to police in 2016, in which he said that while he was sure he properly discharged his duties as a soldier that day, he no longer had any reliable recollection of the events and therefore was unable to answer the officers’ questions.
The British government in 2010 apologized for the “unjustified and unjustifiable” Bloody Sunday killings, the deadliest shooting incident of the Troubles, after a judicial inquiry found that the victims were innocent and had posed no threat to the military.
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