‘The IRA gets an amnesty – and I could be jailed ... for life’
A 76-year-old British Army veteran of Bloody Sunday is still being questioned – 46 years after the event
The old man sitting in his front living room is as much frustrated and exhausted as he is angry. Two years ago, the 76-year-old British Army veteran was driven to his local police station and interviewed under caution for seven hours over events in Northern Ireland that took place almost five decades earlier.
The former paratrooper remains under investigation, accused of the attempted murder of two unarmed protesters who were injured in the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre that left 14 civilians dead.
Sergeant O – he has anonymity and his true identity cannot be disclosed – is suspected of causing their injuries – they were hit by falling masonry dislodged by bullets, possibly fired from his rifle.
The grandfather adjusts his hearing aid and struggles with his one good hand to turn the pages of the various witness statements and documents that he has acquired over the years while under investigation. He is partially paralysed after a stroke eight years ago that left him needing a stick and chairlift to get around the house and an electric wheelchair for going out.
Sergeant O’s wife died in recent months. They had been married for 57 years and he suspects the stress of the police investigation hanging over him had contributed to her death. On the wall of his living room is a photograph of Sergeant O with his wife proudly standing with him and their son at Buckingham Palace in 1972 when he received the Military Medal from the Queen for bravery in service in Northern Ireland.
“My wife was under a lot of stress when she died and had been for a number of years because of all this,” says Sergeant O.
He recalls the day he was driven to a police station near his home in southern England. It was Wednesday, April 13, 2016. “Two police officers had travelled over from Northern Ireland to interview me. I was questioned for six or seven hours. They told me they were looking to charge me with attempted murder. I just looked at them.
“They didn’t care I had had a stroke. They spoke about possible charges but I didn’t know what they were talking about.”
The allegations put to him included the shooting of a woman injured in the thigh, although Sergeant O had no involvement in that – an official report suggested that a lance corporal from Sergeant O’s 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, was responsible.
He says: “The second shooting was a young lad who was hit by debris in the back but it was only a graze. And the third shooting was somebody who fired and knocked a piece of concrete off the wall and it hit a lad.
“I thought ‘how can I be charged with these shootings when it’s knocking off concrete?’ It was ridiculous. It really was. They were trying to charge me with attempted murder. It was a concrete block. A bullet chipped off some concrete and got him in the back. They said he was seriously injured. He was bruised and there was a scrape. That was it. They didn’t say what happened to the woman. I know a woman was shot on Bloody Sunday but I didn’t shoot her.”
Sergeant O recalls arriving in Londonderry on the day of the civil rights protest march in January 1972 that would turn into a bloodbath; a bleak day for the British Army with criminal investigations still ongoing 46 years later.
Sergeant O sat in the front of his platoon’s Humber Pig armoured vehicle, with eight men in the rear. The “pig” was parked by the Rossville flats and Sergeant O didn’t like the fact that his men were being overlooked from the higher ground of the flats.
He made an arrest before shooting broke out. He would give testimony to Lord Widgery, whose report in the immediate aftermath would be branded a whitewash. Lord Saville, 38 years later, would come to a very different conclusion.
Sergeant O was an experienced soldier who had joined up in 1961 just after turning 19 and would serve 22 years in the Army, all of it in 1 Para.
He served five tours in Northern Ireland and saw action in Bahrain, Cyprus and Yemen.
On the night of Bloody Sunday he gave a statement to military police. “I had no problem with that, you would expect an investigation,” he says. “He came out with his findings about two months later. As far as I was concerned
‘How can I be charged when it’s knocking off concrete? It was really ridiculous. They were trying to charge me with attempted murder’
that was the end of it. I was wrong.” He was questioned again at the Saville inquiry which was announced by Tony Blair in 1998 in the run up to the Good Friday peace agreement.
“That was some years ago. Then it all started again. My lawyer at Saville telephoned me from London and told me there is a possibility of a new investigation.”
He finds it hard to comprehend that all these years on he still faces police investigations and possible charges. Even jail.
“They keep hunting the British troops but for what,” he asks, pointing out how unfair it is that IRA suspects – such as John Downey, the alleged Hyde Park bomber – have received so-called comfort letters, effectively giving them amnesty, while troops could be jailed for life.
“It’s completely unfair that the Hyde Park bombing suspect is walking down the street and there is nothing that can be done to him because he got a letter,” says Sergeant O. “I think Blair … set it up badly with the peace deal he agreed. If they are going to have peace let’s have it on both sides.”
Soldier O’s wife died in March. “We had been married 57 years. I would like to think it wasn’t stress but I think it probably was. My wife had all this hanging over her. Bloody Sunday really got her upset.”
Half his platoon came to her
‘It is a ludicrous state of affairs. The Government needs to help the veterans and admit they are sorry and apologise. I really think that’
funeral. “There’s 18 of us,” he says. “We are all tarred with the same brush. [But] they were dangerous times. It was a war.”
Almost 50 years on, he just wants some peace of his own. “It is a ludicrous state of affairs. The Government needs to help the veterans and admit they are sorry and apologise. I really think that.”
He despairs of the time it is all taking. “For Christ’s sake, they did the Nuremberg trials in no time,” he says, “But this is taking forever. I run the risk of being charged.”
He adds: “I feel ashamed of the way the Government has treated me … but we are such an easy target. The peace agreement is all that is important to the Government, not any of us. If they had introduced a truth and reconciliation hearing this wouldn’t be happening.”
Now there is a lingering bitterness. “We feel betrayed. We really do. The Government has let us down very, very badly,” he says.
He glances at the wall behind him with the photograph of Sergeant O smiling proudly on receipt of his Military Medal from the Queen. In a chest in the living room, he still keeps his red beret from 1 Para.
“The Queen gave me my Military Medal at Buckingham Palace,” he says, “And yet 46 years later they are trying to do me for attempted murder.”