UNITED KINGDOM
Open Wound
Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) upheld a decision to bring charges against only one British soldier for crimes committed during Bloody Sunday, one of the deadliest days in the region’s decades of violence, the BBC reported Tuesday.
The decision comes after the families of some of the victims requested a review of the cases of 15 British soldiers over their role in the death of 13 civil rights protesters and the wounding of 15 others in Londonderry on Jan. 30, 1972 or Bloody Sunday.
The PPS said that no new evidence has been found against the soldiers.
The victims’ families expressed disappointed at the verdict and their lawyers said that they will challenge the decision. Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said that the PPS’ decision will “bring back pain and loss” for the families of the victims.
So far, only one defendant, Soldier F, has been charged: He faces two counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.
British soldiers committed more than 300 of the nearly 3,700 slayings during four decades of conflict in Northern Ireland but accountability for those killings has been rare, the Associated Press reported.
No comments:
Post a Comment