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THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT spent over €4 million defending a former paratrooper who was acquitted of the murders of two men during the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972.
Soldier F, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found not guilty of the murders of James Wray and William McKinney on 30 January 1972 – the day when members of the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civil rights protesters on the streets of Derry.
He was also found not guilty of five attempted murders during the incident in Derry’s Bogside area, namely of Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon, Patrick O’Donnell and a person unknown.
Delivering his ruling last week, Judge Patrick Lynch said “whatever suspicions” the court may have about the role of Soldier F, the evidence presented fell short of what was required for a conviction.
He said the sole evidence against Soldier F was from Soldiers G and H, and that this could not be relied upon because both had perjured themselves.
The cost was revealed in response to a parliamentary question tabled by SDLP MP for Foyle Colum Eastwood to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Al Carns, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, said: “The legal fees associated with these proceedings (including associated judicial reviews) amount to £4.3 million (€4.8 million), which may rise marginally once final bills are received.”
The figure does not include “pastoral care, travel and accommodation”. Carns said these costs “are met from a central budget and involve the time of various employees for which a specific cost cannot be calculated”.
In a statement, Eastwood said Soldier F “came to Derry as part of a regiment that shot and killed innocent civil rights protestors as they ran for their lives”.
“He is a self-confessed killer and yet for more than 50 years, he has been a protected species in the eyes of the British Government. Able and enabled to go about his life while his actions subjected good, innocent people in our city to decades of heartache and hurt,” Eastwood said.
He said despite the conclusions of the Saville inquiry report, “the British Government has spent £4.3m of our money to defend Soldier F over the last six years”.
The premium that is placed on defending soldiers, even when the state knows what they did, is an insult to victims who are left to fight for truth and justice alone. It is sick.
Eastwood described it as a “double injustice” for the families of those killed during Bloody Sunday
“The people of Derry will never leave the Bloody Sunday families and the wounded to fight alone. We are still with them and will never abandon them.”
Solicitor Ciaran Shiels, of Madden and Finucane – who supports some of the Bloody Sunday families, slammed an “obscene amount of public money”.
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