Ballymurphy inquests have been ‘emotional roller coaster’
THIRTEEN months of inquest hearings into the 1971 shooting of 10 civilians in west Belfast have been described as an “emotional roller coaster”.
John Teggart, whose father Daniel was among those killed in the series of shootings between August 9-11 1971 in Ballymurphy, said even after campaigning for decades, the hearings had been hard.
Fresh inquests opened into the deaths, which include a priest and a mother of 10, in November 2018 under presiding coroner Mrs Justice Keegan.
The shootings came at a time of mass rioting across Northern Ireland following the introduction of the controversial policy of internment, which saw hundreds of mostly Catholic men detained in mass arrests.
Soldiers have long been held responsible for the Ballymurphy killings, but the accepted narrative became clouded in May 2018 when former UVF members came forward to claim their organisation was also involved.
Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was among witnesses to the inquests, and said that although he had not been a member of the Provisional IRA, he believes they had decided not to engage the soldiers well before civilians were shot and killed.
The bulk of the evidence has now been heard, but there are 10 potential witnesses who lawyers for the next of kin are urging the coroner to obtain evidence from before she begins deliberating on her findings.
The Ballymurphy inquests are set to be followed over the next five years with a number of other coronial probes into events from Northern Ireland’s troubled past.
Mr Teggart said the experience had not been easy, even for hardened campaigners.
He said: “We thought we were hardened campaigners who had heard everything and knew everything, but it was an emotional roller coaster from the very start once we entered court and heard the finer details from eye witnesses about how our loved ones died. When you heard their (civilian eye witnesses) details and saw them reliving what they had seen, you could see that they were traumatised, and still traumatised, by what they had seen.
“Individual family members broke down in court hearing some of these eye witnesses for the first time. But one thing that shone through was the dignity of the families in court, even on hard days when they were hearing evidence from soldiers.”