Ex-British paratrooper acquitted over Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland

By Aysu Bicer

LONDON (AA) - A former British soldier known as “Soldier F” has been found not guilty of murdering two people and attempting to murder five others during the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry, Northern Ireland.

According to local media reports, Judge Patrick Lynch delivered the verdict at Belfast Crown Court after a trial held without a jury.

He said the soldiers involved had “lost all sense of military discipline” on the day, but ruled that the evidence against Soldier F was unreliable and fell short of the criminal standard of proof.

Thirteen people were killed and 15 wounded when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights march in the city’s Catholic Bogside area on Jan. 30, 1972—one of the bloodiest days of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

In 2010, the Saville Inquiry concluded and found that the killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable” and that the troops had lost control. A formal apology was subsequently issued by then-British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Soldier F was the only former paratrooper ever prosecuted over the killings. The court heard that key testimony came from two other soldiers whose accounts were inconsistent.

Relatives of the victims called the verdict a “failure of justice,” while Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill said it is an “affront to justice.”

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Gavin Robinson described it as a “common-sense judgment.”