The prosecution of Soldier F on two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder in 1972 is an ugly scam, one which has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with justice.
It is a farce driven by the Government’s cowardly impulse to appease the Irish Republican movement, which, for cynical ends, wants to rewrite the history of the Troubles and downplay its own central role in the bloodshed.
In allowing this to go ahead, the British state has committed a judicial aberration, turning morality on its head.
The Warrenpoint convoy attack in 1979 left 18 dead. A destroyed British Army lorry is pictured after the roadside blasts
Let’s not forget that in the same year, the Derry Brigade, led by Martin McGuinness, murdered 27 people. Yet the memory of their atrocities has faded.
The state will – for political purposes – seek to show that Soldier F left barracks with the intent of murder.
Of course, the IRA has long admitted that every one of its 27 victims were hunted down like animals in carefully planned murders. But they are not in the dock.
While genuine terrorists walk free, those who served their country and sought to defend the public find themselves in court.
As someone who grew up in Belfast at the peak of the Troubles, and witnessed the carnage inflicted by the paramilitaries, I am repelled by this politicised witch-hunt.
The 1974 Birmingham pub bombings left 21 dead. Firemen are pictured sifting through the debris in the city centre
I served as an officer in the Royal Irish Rangers, during which I did four tours of duty in Northern Ireland, as well as fighting in Kosovo and both Gulf Wars. The idea that the heroism, self-sacrifice and discipline I saw first-hand should now be denigrated is utterly repugnant.
By allowing this grubby saga to continue, the British state is colluding with the Republican propaganda machine rather than healing the wounds of the violence.
What makes the episode particularly absurd is that there is no chance that the prosecutions will succeed. The actions are bound to fail in securing any convictions because no court will be able to give the veterans a fair trial. This is for two reasons.
Firstly, given the long passage of time, memories will have faded and witness statements become unreliable.
But more importantly, it will be impossible for any trial to be held in a spirit of calm and independence, free of any prejudice. There has been a deluge of books, films, newspaper columns and documentaries about Bloody Sunday, many of them whipping up emotions against the British army.
The conventional narrative of British oppression was further fuelled by the long-running inquiry under former Justice of the Supreme Court Lord Saville. His conclusion was that the paratroopers had ‘lost control’ on the day, were solely responsible for the civilian deaths, and had engaged in a cover-up to hide the truth.
Instead of indulging in this cruel judicial pantomime, the Government should go after the real perpetrators of terrorist incidents, many of whom are known to the authorities.
Massacre: The minibus from which Protestant workers were taken and shot in Kingsmill, which left 10 dead
Why is the Crown Prosecution Service not taking legal action against the Birmingham pub bombers who killed 21 people in 1974, or the Republican paramilitaries who organised the Warrenpoint massacre in 1979 that left 18 British soldiers dead?
Why has the CPS failed to prosecute the killers who carried out the Kingsmill atrocity in 1976 in County Armagh, when ten Protestant workers were hauled from their minibus, lined up and then shot? ‘These dreadful murders were carried out by the Provisional IRA,’ declared a 2011 report by the Historic Enquiries Team. Yet nothing has been done by the British state about them.
That is partly because the present Conservative Government is so weak and distracted. Bogged down by Brexit and without a Commons majority, Ministers are vulnerable to the machinations of the Republicans.
In turn, Sinn Fein is trying to gain political ground by distancing itself from the IRA’s record of lethal sectarian violence, which still alienates large sections of the electorate in both Northern and Southern Ireland.
Sinn Fein achieve their goal by portraying the security forces as the real architects of the Troubles through their campaign of state-sanctioned murder and bullying. The prosecution of the paratroopers is the jewel in the crown of this deceitful exercise.
But it is a travesty of history to try to put the blame on the British.
Responsibility for the overwhelming majority of violence in the Troubles lies with the Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries. According to the most authoritative estimates, less than 0.5 per cent of the questionable killings in Ulster during this period were perpetrated by police officers or soldiers.
The Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley got in trouble last week when she said that killings by the security forces were ‘not crimes’ but were carried by people ‘acting under orders and under instruction’. She may have expressed herself clumsily, but she was, in essence, right.
The paratrooper accused of two killings
Soldier F is accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney, and the attempted murder of Joseph Friel, Patrick O’Donnell, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn.
They had joined thousands on the civil rights march through Londonderry.
At the city’s IRA-dominated Bogside district a barricade was manned by the Royal Green Jackets.
‘Warzone’: Soldiers behind an armoured barricade in Londonderry on January 30, 1972
The Army had never imposed itself on Bogside and, for troublemakers among the largely peaceful crowd, it was going to be an afternoon of throwing stones and sticks at their barricade.
But behind the line of Green Jackets were the crack soldiers of the Parachute Regiment, called out from their base in Belfast to ensure order.
The men of 1 Para were ‘never going to act like Aunt Sallies’ as rocks and stones rained on them, their commanding officer said memorably later.
Joe Mahon, now 63, was shot in the hip, while Joseph Friel, 67, was shot in the chest
William McKinney, 27, left, was killed, and James Wray, 22, was shot twice
Patrick O’Donnell, left, was wounded, while Michael Quinn, 64, was shot in the face
Soldier F fired 13 rounds of live ammunition as part of a tight-knit squad of four soldiers – the others known as E, G and H – who by their own admission were responsible for half the deaths that day.
At the Saville Inquiry in 2003, he admitted killing four people – although he denied murder, saying they were armed.
Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, however, the evidence given to the inquiry was not admissible.
It means Soldier F has not been charged in relation to three of those deaths over lack of other evidence – but he does face trial over the fourth, Mr McKinney, 27.
In contrast, British troops were discharging their duty to uphold order and defend the public, often in the toughest circumstances.
Republican posturing will do nothing for bereaved families of the Bloody Sunday victims. All the political agitation over the incident has not brought them any financial compensation, with most of their public funds having been swallowed up by lawyers’ fees at the Saville inquiry.
As for the British Army, I do not share the dark forebodings of Lord Ramsbotham – military assistant to the chief of the general staff at the time of the shootings – who warned about the impact of prosecutions on army recruitment.
Our armed forces remain one of the finest fighting units in the world, with a sense of duty and discipline that is far greater than all the shenanigans of the politicians. British and Irish recruits will continue to join up, going on to serve heroically. What will undoubtedly be lost is the soldiers’ sense of trust in politicians and their bureaucratic leadership. They will be infused with the wariness that at any time they could be thrown to the judicial wolves simply for carrying out their orders.
I recall during the second Gulf War in Iraq in 2003 how I told other senior officers that, in the event of legal trouble, they should privately hire their own lawyers because the Ministry of Defence ones could not be trusted. Such suspicions will greatly intensify if the prosecutions proceed.
If we had a government that really cared about the welfare of its servicemen and women, this fiasco would have ended long ago.
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/15/how-repugnant-troops-are-hunted-down-while-terrorist-murderers-walk-free-writes-colonel-tim-collins/
Main photo article The prosecution of Soldier F on two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder in 1972 is an ugly scam, one which has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with justice.
It is a farce driven by the Government’s cowardly impulse to appease the Irish Republican movement, w...
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Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/14/22/11007326-0-image-a-29_1552601798697.jpg
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