Belfast, Northern Ireland
Reuters
—
A Belfast court on Thursday acquitted a British soldier of murder in the only trial of British military personnel over Bloody Sunday, the 1972 killing of 13 unarmed Catholic civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland.
In 2010, the British government apologized for the “unjust and unjustified” killing of a member of a British Army regiment when he opened fire in the predominantly Irish nationalist city of Londonderry (Derry), one of the defining moments in Northern Ireland’s recent history.
However, all efforts to prosecute the soldiers failed.
The soldier, who cannot be legally identified and is known as Soldier F, was acquitted of murdering two men and attempting to murder five others.
Bloody Sunday was one of the defining moments in the upheaval, three decades of sectarian violence involving nationalists seeking a united Ireland, unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a British province, and the British military. A peace agreement in 1998 largely ended the bloodshed.
Soldier F was not called to give evidence during the month-long trial, which was tried without a jury.
The defense called no witnesses, saying the more than 50-year-old military statements at the heart of the case were clearly unreliable and that no independent supporting evidence had been presented to support the prosecution’s case.
At the beginning of the trial, the court heard a short statement made by Soldier F to the police in 2016, in which he said that although he believed he had properly performed his duties as a soldier that day, he no longer had reliable recollection of the event and was therefore unable to answer the police officers’ questions.
In 2010, the British government apologized for the “unjust and unwarranted” Bloody Sunday murders, the deadliest shooting of the unrest, after a judicial inquiry found the victims were innocent and posed no threat to the military.
