A Belfast judge on Thursday acquitted a British ex-paratrooper of killing unarmed civilians during the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, a verdict condemned by victims’ relatives and Northern Ireland’s political leader.
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Judge Patrick Lynch told the court he was satisfied there had been an intention to kill but that the prosecution had failed to “establish by whose hand the fatal shots were fired”.
“I find the accused not guilty on all seven counts,” he said, acquitting him of two charges of murder and five of attempted murder during one of the most bitterly contested events of the three-decade “Troubles” that plagued Northern Ireland.
The former soldier, identified only as Soldier F, listened to the verdict from behind a thick blue curtain, hidden from view in the packed courtroom.
He had been charged with murdering civilians James Wray and William McKinney, and attempting to murder five others during the crackdown on a civil rights protest in the city of Londonderry – also known as Derry to pro-Irish nationalists.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who is vice-president of the Sinn Fein pro-Irish unity party, rejected the verdicts.