Veterans ‘hounded to sustain peace process’
THE Government has been prepared to sacrifice a few old soldiers for the sake of sustaining the peace process, a former SAS soldier has told MPS.
Giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, veterans campaigner Robin Horsfall claimed former service personnel are being unfairly hounded amid a desire by the republican movement to rewrite the history of the Troubles.
Mr Horsfall, a member of the Million Veterans March campaign, said ex-servicemen are opposed to any form of prosecution amnesty over historic incidents, but he insisted cases should only be pursued if there is fresh evidence.
Mr Horsfall was one of several witnesses from groups representing former security force members who gave evidence to the committee on the Government’s latest plans to deal with the toxic legacy of the Troubles.
“We believe that there is a determination by the republican movement to rewrite history and that they require to rewrite history one conviction of one British soldier back from the earlier years,” he said.
“If they can achieve that then they can turn around and say: ‘See, we told you there were atrocities; see, we told you the soldiers were occupying Northern Ireland’. And they can create a completely new history based on that one conviction.”
He added: “It’s our belief that there is a strong bias in this, that there is political pressure to get that one conviction.”
The committee is examining the Government’s latest plans for dealing with historic cases. In March it was announced that only Troubles killings with “compelling” new evidence and a realistic prospect of prosecution will receive a full police reinvestigation.
The Government said most unsolved cases will be closed and a new law would prevent those investigations into the decades of violence from being reopened.
It marked a significant step away from mechanisms agreed by the UK and Irish Governments and main Stormont parties in the 2014 Stormont House Agreement.
Harry Wragg, from Rolling Thunder, another campaign that has protested against the prosecution of veterans, said he and his colleagues feel they are being “sold down the river”.
“The British Government have completely and utterly let down our veterans. The veterans just feel totally overlooked,” he said.