A former British soldier is to be tried for two murders and five attempted murders committed during Bloody Sunday. The charges specifically relate to the murders of William McKinney and James Wray in Londonderry on 30 January 1972. The incident saw members of the Army’s Parachute Regiment shoot dead thirteen people and injure at least fifteen others during a civil rights demonstration in the Bogside in Northern Ireland. Soldier F has not been named because of an interim court order granting anonymity.
The prosecution of Soldier F has been years in the making, following a number of legal challenges and reversals. Prosecutors originally decided to send him to trial in 2019 after examining 125,000 pages of material, but dropped the case in 2021 due to the collapse of a separate trial involving two other Army veterans. However, this decision was reversed following a successful legal challenge by the families of the Bloody Sunday victims, prompting a decision to resume the prosecution last September.
Mickey McKinney, the brother of one of the victims, welcomed the decision to take Soldier F to trial, emphasising that the case had been a long time coming. He noted that witnesses are dying and becoming unavailable, making it all the more important that the trial proceeds as swiftly as possible. The trial will take place in the Crown Court in Belfast, although no date has yet been set.
The original incident remains one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the events of Bloody Sunday representing a dark day in the country’s history. The UK government originally appointed Lord Widgery to head an inquiry into the killings, which largely exonerated the soldiers and authorities concerned. However, a new inquiry headed by judge Lord Saville in 1998 took twelve years to compile, becoming the longest-running inquiry in British legal history and costing around £200m. It ultimately found that none of those shot were posing a threat or doing anything that justified opening fire. In response, then Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the killings, describing them as “unjustified and unjustifiable”. Following the release of the Saville report, the Police Service of Northern Ireland began a murder investigation into the Bloody Sunday deaths
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