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Cameron Says 1972 N. Ireland Killings Were â€˜Unjustifiedâ€™

15 June 2010 18:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain offered an extraordinary apology on Tuesday for the 1972 killings of unarmed demonstrators by British troops in Northern Ireland, saying that a long-awaited investigation had left no doubt that the â€œBloody Sundayâ€ shootings were â€œboth unjustified and unjustifiableâ€, APA reports quoting The New York Times.

â€œOn behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry,â€ Mr. Cameron said in a speech before Parliament. â€œWhat happened should never, ever have happened.â€

The 5,000-page report is the product of one of the longest and most expensive public inquiries in Britainâ€™s history, but questions remain about whether it will serve to heal or reopen wounds from the violent events on Jan. 30, 1972, in the city of Londonderry, when police officers fired on a civil rights march, killing 14 people.

â€œIt is astonishing to think that when the tribunal, chaired by Lord Saville, began its work in 1998, David Cameron was not even in Parliament,â€ Paul Bew, a professor at Queenâ€™s University in Belfast, the provincial capital, wrote in The Daily Telegraph. â€œNow, 38 years after the event itself, Bloody Sunday has come back to haunt another British prime minister.â€

The event triggered three decades of bitter and sectarian strife in Northern Island, known as the Troubles, which claimed more than 3,600 lives. Especially fraught is the question of whether any soldiers â€” who have maintained they fired in self-defense â€” could face prosecution nearly four decades after the shooting.

In Londonderry, thousands of people gathered at the shooting site and applauded as Mr. Cameronâ€™s speech was broadcast live on giant screens. They heralded the report for declaring that all of those killed were innocents.

â€œThe truth has been brought home at last,â€ said Tony Doherty, whose father, Patrick, was killed in the melee.

Mr. Cameron said the report concluded that British troops had fired first and without warning, and that none of those killed and wounded had been armed. Mr. Cameron said that some republican paramilitary members had fired shots, but he said their actions did not justify firing on civilians.

The inquiry, led by Lord Saville, took evidence from some 2,500 people between 1998 and 2004. The final cost of some $290 million made it Britainâ€™s most expensive inquiry and it was among the longest in British history.

The investigation was initiated by former Prime Minister Tony Blair as part of the maneuvering that led to the formal peace agreement called the Good Friday agreement in 1998.

That accord led to the creation of a power-sharing provincial government grouping Irish Republicans seeking a unified Ireland with Unionists who want to maintain the provinceâ€™s ties to Britain.

The agreement also permitted killers from both sides to leave prison early. Some Unionists argue that prosecution of British soldiers at this time would leave many of their followers unhappy.

â€œI think many people would be appalled if soldiers were pursued but other people who were lawbreakers every day were not,â€ Reuters quoted Gregory Campbell, a Unionist lawmaker, as saying.

The shootings 38 years ago inspired radicalized Catholic youths to enlist in the clandestine Irish Republican Army fighting both British forces and loyalist paramilitary groups, a bloody campaign that spread to the British mainland.

Even now, decades later, the gunfire still resonates in the rival narratives of Northern Irelandâ€™s sometimes halting effort to overcome its past.

Survivors continue to relive the horror of that day. Mickey McKinney was at the march but only learned hours later that his 27-year-old brother, William, had been shot dead.

â€œWe all went on the march â€” all my brothers and sisters and their friends and neighbors,â€ Mr. McKinney said. â€œAs the march took off I looked down the hill and I saw Willie. He had a cine camera. He was a keen amateur photographer. It was about 3 p.m. That was the last time I saw him alive.â€

An hour later, he said, he heard the gunshots. â€œI saw the army coming in and realized that this was different. The army had never come into that area,â€ he said. â€œThere were hundreds running down that street roaring and screaming because of the effects of the gunfire.â€

John Kelly, 61, said his brother Michael, 17 at the time, was the youngest victim. â€œBefore the civil rights protests I had no interest in politics. I had a job. I was going steady with a girl,â€ he said. Instead, he found himself helping build barricades against the police and British Army incursions into the Catholic districts of the Bogside and the Creggan.

â€œI do not give a damn about the cost if it had cost a billion pounds,â€ he said, angry at the suggestion among some politicians that the inquiry had been a waste of money. â€œMy brotherâ€™s life was priceless. You cannot put a price on justice. Letâ€™s not forget that if they had not withheld the truth that there would be no need to have fought to clear our peopleâ€™s names.â€

The events of Bloody Sunday changed his and familyâ€™s life, he said. When his mother died in 2004, he said, â€œI lied to her that Michaelâ€™s name had been cleared. She died happy knowing that.â€

An important figure in the debate is Martin McGuinness, who was an I.R.A. member in Londonderry at the time of the shootings and is now deputy first minister in the power-sharing Northern Ireland government.

â€œThis is a big day for Ireland,â€ he said, according to the Press Association. â€œThis is a big day for the world, because the eyes of the world are looking at what is going to happen.â€