Northern Ireland leader Peter Robinson called on authorities on Wednesday not to prosecute soldiers named in a report on Bloody Sunday, urging the troubled province to “close the book” on the episode.
His comments came a day after the publication of the long-awaited Saville report into one of the province’s darkest chapters, in which 13 people were shot dead by British soldiers at a march in Londonderry in 1972.
“I have to say that I do not believe there’s anything to be gained by prosecutions at this stage,” said Robinson, the province’s first minister. “We have finished this chapter. We should close the book and we should move on as a society and get the healing within our community that is so much needed.”
After the report’s publication, Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service said it was considering whether to prosecute anyone in relation to the shootings, but gave no date for when a decision would be taken.
Opinion has been sharply divided over whether to bring charges following the report’s publication, which concluded that none of the victims were armed and soldiers gave no warnings before opening fire.
While some relatives have called for the soldiers to be hauled before the courts, other commentators have argued doing so would be unfair and even undermine hard-won peace and stability in Northern Ireland.
John Kelly, whose brother Michael was shot dead on Bloody Sunday, said he thought there was now a “big possibility” soldiers could be charged with murder or at least perjury after the report found many had lied to the inquiry.
“My young brother was murdered on Bloody Sunday and Soldier F murdered him and was responsible for three other deaths that day. He was killing at will and got away with it,” Kelly said.
He was referring to a soldier, identified only by his rank and an initial in the report, who shot his brother and several others and who Kelly describes as a “serial killer.”
“Serial killers are prosecuted and serial killers go to jail and as far as I’m concerned, that’s where soldier F should go, to jail,” he said.
A lawyer who represented troops at the 12-year Bloody Sunday inquiry insisted, however, that the findings did not open the door for prosecutions and accused top judge Mark Saville, who led it, of having “cherry picked” evidence.
“I think Lord Saville felt under very considerable pressure after 12 years and £191 million [US$283 million] to give a report which gave very clear findings even where in truth the evidence didn’t support them,” Stephen Pollard said. “What he has had to do is adopt the pieces of evidence that fit the theory and abandon those that don’t.”
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
POWER PLAY: The dam is planned to more than triple the 88.2 billion kilowatt-hours designed capacity of the Three Gorges Dam, which is currently the world’s largest China has approved the construction of what would be the world’s largest hydropower dam, launching an ambitious project on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau that could affect millions downstream in India and Bangladesh. The dam, which would be in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, could produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, according to an estimate provided by Power Construction Corp of China in 2020. That would more than triple the 88.2 billion kilowatt-hours designed capacity of the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest, in central China. The project would play a major role in meeting China’s
RSS