Troubles veteran to face trial

Dennis Hutchings is awaiting trial for attempted murder. His judge-only case is to be heard at a top-security court under special procedures approved by the Supreme Court.

Yet Hutchings is not a terrorist or a criminal but a 79-year-old man with kidney disease who served 26 years in the British Army, reaching the rank of regimental sergeant-major in the Life Guards.

In 1974, aged 28, he was part of a Northern Ireland patrol that shot dead John Pat Cunningham, an unarmed, vulnerable adult afraid of soldiers. Police told Hutchings at the time that he would not face prosecution but in 2015 he answered the door of his Cornwall home to find 22 police officers there to arrest him.

Despite promises from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government – including a pledge from Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, this week – that Ulster veterans would be protected from ‘‘lawfare’’, Hutchings’ trial is to go ahead in Belfast this year. On Wednesday a High Court judge ruled that the government’s manifesto promise to stop prosecutions carried no weight in law and Hutchings must stand trial.

Cunningham was 27 when he was shot dead in Benburb, County Tyrone, in June 1974. He did not stop when challenged by the patrol and at least two soldiers opened fire.

A police review in 2013 found the dead man had posed no threat and the original police investigation was inadequate. A government apology followed and a new criminal investigation resulted in Hutchings being charged with attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm. The trial will be heard by a Diplock court: the judge-only procedure set up in Northern Ireland to avoid terrorist intimidation of jurors.

The Times