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DUBLIN — Relatives of 10 civilians killed by British soldiers in Belfast in August 1971 have condemned U.K. government plans to prevent the prosecution of former soldiers involved in disputed Northern Ireland killings.
Families of the dead demanded justice Tuesday after a Belfast judge published a mammoth report into the killings, capping a two-year coroner’s inquest involving 150 witnesses, among them 60 former soldiers.
Justice Siobhan Keegan concluded that, despite British army claims to have been shooting at Irish Republican Army gunmen, all 10 victims were “entirely innocent.”
The dead included a Catholic priest giving last rites to a wounded man and a mother of eight. All were killed over a three-day period in Ballymurphy, west Belfast, immediately after Northern Ireland’s government introduced internment without trial of IRA suspects.
Tuesday’s ruling coincided with the launch of the new legislative program for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government which was unveiled at the U.K. parliament’s state opening. It intends to introduce new laws to “address the legacy of the past” in Northern Ireland.
Part of that agenda includes blocking former soldiers from prosecution for any killings committed before the U.K. region’s 1998 peace accord, including former Parachute Regiment soldiers who committed the Ballymurphy killings.
More than a dozen relatives of the dead told a Belfast press conference they would legally challenge any government bid to shield their relatives’ killers from court. They accused the Ministry of Defence and Johnson of complicity.
“None of these soldiers have faced prosecutions,” said Briege Voyle, a daughter of 44-year-old Joan Connolly, who was fatally shot in the head. “No one should be above the law. We will not accept your amnesty for murderers.”
A Downing Street spokesperson said the government would “review the report and carefully consider the conclusions drawn.”
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