The long-awaited report into the Bloody Sunday massacre will conclude that a number of the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers were unlawful killings, the Guardian has learned.
Lord Saville's 12-year inquiry into the deaths, the longest public inquiry in British legal history, will conclude with a report published next Tuesday, putting severe pressure on the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to prosecute soldiers.
Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionists and one of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, revealed to the Guardian that when Tony Blair agreed to the inquiry in 1998, he warned the then prime minister that any conclusion that departed "one millimetre" from the earlier 1972 Widgery report into the killings would lead to "soldiers in the dock".
It's about time.
I think it's too little too late for the families of the victims though.
Bloody Sunday: ex-paratrooper in hiding over Saville inquiry evidence
Witness protection for Soldier 027, who told panel that members of his company had been told to 'get some kills'
Alexa, what never seems to get taken into consideration is the ill preparedness and unsuitability of the training given to the Army at this time. Paratroopers were, and still are, primarily a shock troop. Their training is slightly different, from the rest of the Army, and calls for a level of aggression and ferocity unimaginable to most.
Paul
Paul I agree with you that your cannot blame soldiers carrying out orders
I'm not sure I agree with that. You can blame them for following immoral orders that SHOULD and MUST be disobeyed. The burden of faults rests on both the soldiers, who carried out the orders, and those who gave them.
In a way, everybody is responsible. If we, as a people, simply refused to support the capitalist war machine, the wars would've been stopped. In the same light, a soldier could easily have refused to kill an innocent civilian and nobody would've died. The people above could have not sent us to war in the first place etc. etc.
As a point of interest, the British governments conflict with the IRA escalated as a result of Bloody Sunday.
The legacy of the killings, however, was the boost to IRA recruitment and the outrage that fuelled paramilitary violence through subsequent decades. Lord Widgery's inquiry and official exoneration of the soldiers – dismissed by nationalists as a state "cover up" – aggravated the sense of injustice.
During the three previous years, the Troubles had claimed around 200 lives. In 1972, the year in which Bloody Sunday occurred, a total of 479 people died; it was Northern Ireland's worst year of carnage. The annual death rate did not fall below 200 again until 1977. Without Bloody Sunday the province's history might have been very different.
I've always found 'capitalist war machine' an intruiging turn of phrase. I remember a Viz spoof which joked that a farmer had found the 'Nazi war machine' rusting in a barn after his father brought it home as a souvenir! As I remember he was going to restore it to drive around fairs.
The Army in N.I. was put there to keep the peace in Northern Ireland as terrorists couldn't quite grasp that the district was a province of the UK.
(And I mentioned the IRA as part of my spin-off observation on those who would complain loudly about Britain's presence in Ireland, but not so much (if at all) the IRA. Just as they do now with the war on terror and Islamic terrorists.)
why we are apologising when the IRA have never done so to the victims of their terror campaigns
I did not know they apologised so I withdraw that statement.
I do however still think the solders should not be prosecuted. If we really are going to go after them for what happened, I would hope the same people who would call for the soldiers arrest be the first to call on jailing all those guilty of crimes against the British.
I agree that the soldiers shouldn't be prosecuted. To do so would be a travesty, IMO.
Yes it is good the PM apologised, although to be honest I was not alive for the massacre so I do not see why the apology should be on my behalf or why we are apologising when the IRA have never done so to the victims of their terror campaigns, but 12 years and 100 million pounds later we get the report? Did it really need 100 million pounds to find out they were innocent? Really?
But should the soldiers face jail? Absolutely not. I would not support a public witchhunt for those soldiers
My colleagues who have had more chance to read the report say that Saville says that none of the killings were justified, but that the deaths can be divided into two categories: those killed by soldiers motivated by fear and panic; and those killed by soldiers who were not motivated by fear and panic.
Three of the deaths seem to be in the first category, and 11 in the second category.
The report is quite damning about some of the soldiers. As Cameron said in his statement, Saville says some of them "knowingly put forward false accounts in order to seek to justify their firing". Here are two of the particularly critical paragraphs from the report. This is para 3.102 from the "principal conclusions" report:
As to the further shooting in Rossville Street, which caused the deaths of William Nash, John Young and Michael McDaid, Corporal P claimed that he fired at a man with a pistol; Lance Corporal J claimed that he fired at a nail bomber; and Corporal E claimed that he fired at a man with a pistol in the Rossville Flats. We reject each of these claims as knowingly untrue. We are sure that these soldiers fired either in the belief that no one in the areas towards which they respectively fired was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or not caring whether or not anyone there was posing such a threat. In their cases we consider that they did not fire in a state of fear or panic.
This however was wrong and we do need to acknowledge that.
No one is saying the British soldiers were right in this instance or that they are innocent. No one is excusing or condoning this.
What I am however doing and I think I am quite in my rights to do so is question the bill for this report. It has taken 12 years and 100 million pounds.
That same money could have funded many other things and put to better use, the Iraq war did not even cost that much and it has cost so much more lives.
So yes, I do think the PM was right to apologise but do I think the report was worth the price tag? No.
It would have been better to come out with the truth 38 years ago. I know people have been talking about the money spent. Perhaps they will find a better way to deal with such situations. Iraq inquiries, how much? Is it needed?
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