Court finds former British soldier not responsible in Bloody Sunday homicide trial | Courts News | USAEMALL.com

A British soldier charged with murder over the Bloody Sunday massacre has been acquitted by a Belfast court, in a verdict condemned by victims’ relatives and Northern Ireland’s political leader.

The former British paratrooper, known as Soldier F under a court anonymity order, was accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney and attempting to murder five others when soldiers opened fire on unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Derry more than 50 years ago.

Belfast Crown Court was silent on Thursday as Judge Patrick Lynch read the verdict acquitting Soldier F of two charges of murder and five of attempted murder. Soldier F listened to the verdict from behind a thick blue curtain, hidden from view in the packed courtroom.

On January 30, 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on unarmed civil rights protesters as more than 10,000 people marched in Derry. British soldiers shot at least 26 unarmed civilians. Thirteen people were killed, while another man died from his injuries four months later.

The massacre became a pivotal moment in the Troubles, helping to fuel nearly three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking civil rights and a united Ireland, pro-British unionists wanting Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, and the British Army. A 1998 peace deal largely ended the bloodshed.

Lynch said in his verdict that he was satisfied that soldiers had lost all sense of military discipline and opened fire with intent to kill and that “those responsible should hang their heads in shame”.

But he said the case fell short of the burden of proof.

“Delay has, in my view, seriously hampered the capacity of the defence to test the veracity and accuracy of the hearsay statements,” he said.

An initial investigation into the massacre — the Widgery Tribunal, an investigation held in 1972 — largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of responsibility.

A second investigation, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry, found in June 2010 that there had been no justification for any of the shootings and found that paratroopers had fired at fleeing unarmed civilians.

Following the Saville Inquiry, police in Northern Ireland launched a murder investigation, with prosecutors finding that one former soldier would face trial for two murders and five attempted murders.

Prosecutors have previously ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge 16 other former British soldiers.

Soldier F was not called to give evidence during the one-month trial that was heard without a jury. He had previously told investigators he no longer had a reliable recollection of the massacre.

Mickey McKinney, brother of William McKinney, one of the two victims named in the case, denounced the verdict outside the courtroom on Thursday.

“Soldier F has been discharged from the defendant’s criminal dock, but it is one million miles away from being an honourable discharge,” McKinney said. “Soldier F created two young widows on Bloody Sunday, he orphaned 12 children, and he deprived dozens of siblings of a loving brother,”

McKinney said he “firmly” blamed the British government for the trial’s outcome.

“The blame lies firmly with the British state, with the RUC [the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Irish police], who failed to investigate the murders on Bloody Sunday properly, or indeed at all,” McKinney said.

Following Thursday’s verdict, a spokesperson for the UK government said the UK is “committed to finding a way forward that acknowledges the past, whilst supporting those who served their country during an incredibly difficult period in Northern Ireland’s history”.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who is vice president of the Sinn Fein pro-Irish unity party, called the verdict “deeply disappointing”.

“The continued denial of justice for the Bloody Sunday families is deeply disappointing,” she wrote on X. “Not one British soldier or their military and political superiors has ever been held to account. That is an affront to justice.”