An army veteran will stand trial on Monday charged with murder in relation to Bloody Sunday, when the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civil rights protesters in Derry in 1972.
The former paratrooper, known as Soldier F, is charged with two murders and five attempted murders during a military operation that became a defining event of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
He has pleaded not guilty to the murders of James Wray and William McKinney and the attempted murder of five others.
For families of the dead and wounded, the trial at Belfast crown court is the culmination of 53 years of campaigning.
Soldiers shot 31 civilians in Derry on 30 January 1972. Thirteen died that day. Another casualty who died four months later is widely considered a 14th victim.
A tribunal led by Lord Widgery in 1972 cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing but a 2010 inquiry by Lord Saville concluded that the killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable”. The British government apologised for the killings. Plays, films, books, documentaries and annual commemorations have kept Bloody Sunday in public consciousness.
A court order granted Soldier F anonymity after defence lawyers argued he would be a “prized target” for dissident republicans if his identity was made public. When he appeared in court for arraignment in December 2024, he sat in a witness box that was shielded from the main body of the court by a thick floor-to-ceiling blue curtain. Similar arrangements are expected for the trial.
Mr Justice Fowler will preside over the case without a jury, which is permitted in exceptional cases.
At a pre-trial hearing in March, Soldier F’s legal team argued that inconsistencies in accounts by his fellow paratroopers and civilian witnesses meant there was insufficient evidence for a trial.
Prosecutors said “contestable evidence” would be addressed during the trial and that there was “overwhelming evidence” regarding Soldier F’s actions on the day the army opened fire on protesters in Derry’s Bogside.
Authorising the case to proceed, Fowler said he accepted evidence that indicated that soldiers in Glenfada Park acted unlawfully in firing with high-velocity rifles at a group of unarmed civilians in a relatively confined courtyard. “In my view, it provides a sufficiency of evidence and it is not tenuous. Accordingly, the court discerns that the committal papers disclose a case sufficient to put the defendant on trial in respect of each of the seven counts on the indictment,” he said.
The case will be closely watched by families of those who died on Bloody Sunday and veterans’ groups, as well as the Irish and British governments. London and Dublin are discussing ways to repeal the Legacy Act, which was an attempt by the previous Conservative government to phase out prosecutions for Troubles-era alleged crimes.
