Nine veterans face threat of Bloody Sunday murder charge

NINE more Bloody Sunday veterans could be charged with murder and attempted murder almost 50 years on, after prosecutors in Northern Ireland announced a case review.

The soldiers, who all served in the Parachute Regiment, were informed seven months ago that they would not be prosecuted over the deaths of 13 civil rights marchers in Londonderry on Jan 30 1972.

However, lawyers acting for the relatives of those killed and wounded have handed a 149-page dossier to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland demanding that it overturn its earlier decision.

The PPS has announced it is now reviewing the files.

Only one veteran – who can only be identified as Soldier F – was charged over the mass shooting of civilians in the early days of the Troubles.

However, Madden and Finucane Solicitors submitted a legal challenge to the PPS, claiming that a further nine soldiers, who also retain anonymity, should be charged. The lawyers have also asked that three further murder charges be brought against Soldier F along with two additional attempted murder charges.

Soldier F, a grandfather in his 70s, was charged with the murder of two protesters last March. The remaining suspects were informed in writing that no charges were being brought. But the prosecution service has now agreed to a review. “The PPS is currently reviewing decisions not to prosecute a number of suspects reported by police in connection with the events on Bloody Sunday, as requested by a number of victims and families of deceased persons involved,” a spokesman said.

“Detailed legal submissions were recently received and the PPS is now in a position to progress these reviews. It is not possible at this stage to give a time frame for this process to be concluded. We will continue to keep the families and victims informed.”

In all likelihood, no formal announcement will be made until next year and even if the PPS chooses not to overturn its earlier decision, the case will then go back to court for a judicial review.

One former paratrooper, who had faced a possible attempted murder charge, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that the review would heap distress on veterans in their late 60s and 70s.

Sergeant O, 77, who had been suspected of attempted murder after he fired into the air dislodging masonry that may have injured civilian protesters below, said: “It is incredibly upsetting for soldiers who thought they had been cleared. There are going to be a lot of complaints about this.

“We were told it was all done and we were in the clear and now we have to wait yet again. It is agonising.”

Sergeant O is not among the veterans facing being

charged under the review but he called for Boris Johnson “to put a stop to this”.

Philip Barden, a partner at Devonshires law firm, which is acting for 10 Bloody Sunday soldiers, said: “These are elderly men who served their country and who were previously informed that the investigation against them had been concluded and that no charges were being brought.

“This is yet another example of the stress that people are being put through for what many consider to be a completely unfair system.”

Seventeen veterans of Bloody Sunday faced a criminal inquiry launched in 2012 after the conclusion of a 12-year public inquiry that found none of those shot by troops were armed and that soldiers had “knowingly put forward false accounts to justify their firing”.

Lawyers for the victims have complained that the PPS – in bringing charges solely against Soldier F – had “erred in law” in concluding that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction for any more of the soldiers under investigation.

The legal team, in its lengthy submission, claims that statements given by soldiers to the Royal Military Police in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday should be admissible as evidence along with testimony given to a tribunal held in March 1972.

The PPS said in March this year that soldiers’ own accounts would be ruled inadmissible in the courts.

Victims in Northern Ireland have the right to have PPS decisions reviewed.

Although it is unusual for the PPS to overturn its own decisions after a review, it did so last year in nine out of 186 cases – equivalent to 5 per cent of the requests it handled.