Bloody Sunday massacre: British ex-soldier arrested on suspicion of murder

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Bloody Sunday massacre: British ex-soldier arrested on suspicion of murder

March 14, 2019, 7:42 AM EDT / Updated March 14, 2019, 8:41 AM EDT
By Associated Press

DUBLIN — Detectives investigating the biggest mass killing committed by British troops in Northern Ireland, the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, have arrested on suspicion of murder one of the soldiers who opened fire that day — the first detention of its kind following decades of demands for justice.

A special police unit probing killings from the Northern Ireland conflict, the Legacy Investigation Branch, said it was interrogating the 66-year-old former member of the Parachute Regiment, the elite force that shot to death 13 Catholic protesters in the Bogside district of Londonderry. Catholic leaders and lawyers representing relatives of the dead welcomed the arrest and said they expected more retired soldiers to be arrested.

The detained man was identified as a former soldier who had testified, with his identity concealed, to two fact-finding investigations about his role in shooting at protesters when he was a 23-year-old lance corporal. To the fury of Irish nationalists, the original British probe in 1972 exonerated him and the other soldiers.

But after 12 years, the most expensive fact-finding commission in British history concluded in 2010 that the soldiers had opened fire first and without warning, not in response to attacks from the outlawed Irish Republican Army; all but one of the Bloody Sunday victims were unarmed at the time they were killed; and none posed a threat to the soldiers.

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bloody-sunday-massacre-british-ex-soldier-arrested-suspicion-murder-n983096

[Sanity Claws]

1. 46 years ago

The soldier who opened fire is probably well past retirement age.

[Denzil_DC]

2. I hope inquiries extend up the chain of command, up to the Heath government and later ones.

What were the rules of engagement, what briefings took place, etc.?

[Ghost Dog]

3. Bloody Sunday was a very British atrocity - the top brass got away with it

There may be only one thing that the Bloody Sunday families and the defenders of the Parachute Regiment are agreed on following the announcement that a former lance corporal is to be charged with two murders and four attempted murders: that it is perverse and unfair that one low-ranking soldier should be made to carry the can for what happened in Derry 47 years ago.

Once again, Kipling’s “poor bloody infantry” are to take the blame.

The man set for trial, Soldier F, didn’t erupt into the Bogside on his own initiative during the civil rights march of 30 January 1972. The plan for the day that ended with 13 dead civilians, had been drawn up by more prominent and powerful men.

Three weeks before Bloody Sunday Maj Gen Robert Ford, commander of land forces in Northern Ireland, wrote in a memo following a recce to Derry that he was “disturbed” by what he regarded as the soft attitude of local army and police chiefs to the Bogside, and added: “I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ringleaders amongst the DYH [Derry Young Hooligans].” ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/bloody-sunday-derry-top-brass-one-soldier-charged