In Court 12 of Belfast’s Laganside court complex, there was silence.
There was silence from the families of those killed on Bloody Sunday, and those injured on the day, and there was silence, too, from the dock, where Soldier F has sat, obscured from view behind a floor-to-ceiling blue curtain to protect his anonymity, for the duration of his trial for murder and attempted murder on January 30th, 1972.
He has been silent for these last five weeks, just as he has been largely silent in 53 years since he and other soldiers from the British army’s elite Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed civilians at an anti-internment march in Derry.
That day they shot dead 13 people; a 14th died later. Many of them were teenagers, many of them were running away in fear for their lives; all were innocent.
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Four decades later, Soldier F would tell the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) he no longer had any “reliable recollection” of the events of Bloody Sunday, and therefore could not answer any questions. He declined to give evidence on his own behalf during the trial.
In the face of silence, others spoke out. The focus of this trial was “a timespan of no more than a couple of minutes”, Judge Patrick Lynch said as he delivered his verdict on Thursday, yet it left two people – William McKinney and Jim Wray – dead and others wounded.
In his lengthy judgment, running to almost three hours, he summarised the evidence of the many civilian witnesses as they described the chaos and panic in the courtyard of Glenfada Park North. Joe Mahon had told how he saw a soldier spraying bullets from a gun held at his hip, how he lay beside the already wounded Jim Wray and watched as the soldier “fired two shots into him”, how he himself survived only by playing dead.
This is a memory he will never, can never forget, just as so many others – the families of the victims, the injured, all those who were there on that day – live with their own memories, just as the collective memory of what happened on Bloody Sunday has become stitched into the fabric of the city.
[ Former paratrooper Soldier F found not guilty of murder in Bloody Sunday trialOpens in new window ]
In the years since, they have spoken these memories loud and often; a campaign by the families of the victims led to the UK government announcing an inquiry into the atrocity, chaired by Lord Saville.
His report in 2010 was an official acknowledgment the victims were innocent and the killings “unjustified and unjustifiable”, and led to an apology from the British government.
Today it is worth rereading some of what that official record has to say about Soldier F.
The report is “sure” Soldier F “fired ... and mortally injured Michael Kelly”.
It is “sure” F and three others – E, G and H – “between them were responsible” for the casualties in Glenfada Park North: William McKinney and Jim Wray, who died, and four others who survived.
It is “sure that Lance Corporal F fired at and shot Bernard McGuigan and Patrick Doherty”, the last two to die on the day, and it is “highly probable” he was responsible for shooting others who survived.
Following a separate PSNI murder investigation, prosecutors in the North considered charges against 16 former British soldiers and two alleged former members of the Official IRA but concluded, in all but one case, the available evidence was “insufficient to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction”.
That exception was Soldier F. The basis for his trial was statements given by other soldiers, G and H, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday and to the Widgery and, in one case, Saville inquiry, which the prosecution argued placed Soldier F in Glenfada Park North and firing his weapon at the time the casualties occurred.
[ Fintan O’Toole: Bloody Sunday, the 10-minute massacre that lasted decadesOpens in new window ]
His defence was simply to discredit these statements, arguing they were unreliable and untruthful and simply did not “stack up”.
At the time an agreement was in place between the British army and RUC, which meant incidents of lethal force were investigated not by the police, but by the Royal Military Police (RMP).
On the night of Bloody Sunday, as the city was coming to terms with what had happened on its streets, Soldiers G and H gave their first statements to the RMP. These were ordered, not volunteered, and were not given under caution, two factors that would normally preclude them from being used as evidence in court.
Though in this case Judge Lynch ruled they could be admitted, there were other problems. G and H had been “serially untruthful” and perjured themselves, the judge said, and their statements could not be tested in court.
Yet there was much that could be said, and much that Judge Lynch did say. He was in no doubt that, between them, the soldiers known as E, F G and H were “responsible for the deaths and woundings in Glenfada Park North”; the soldier(s) who had opened fire had done so “with the intention to kill” and had not acted in self-defence.
“They had totally lost all sense of military discipline,” he said. Referencing the Parachute Regiment’s “proud record” in the second World War, he said its memory had been “sullied by some of their successors, shooting in the back unarmed civilians fleeing from them in the streets of a British city”.
“Those responsible should hang their heads in shame,” he said.
Yet, as Judge Lynch said, “whatever suspicions the court may have about the role of F”, the fact remained that the evidence presented by the Crown “falls well short” of the standard required, that proof beyond reasonable doubt.
The only sound in the courtroom was the voice of Judge Lynch as he delivered his verdict: not guilty on all seven counts.
Still in silence, the families filed out of the courtroom. Though they had known this was the likely outcome, the drawn-out nature of the verdict had momentarily given them hope that perhaps they might secure a conviction.
Their faces spoke of shock and disappointment but also resilience. There were tears but also arms around shoulders in support, and fists raised in defiance.
“Smile everybody, smile,” shouted John Kelly, whose brother Michael was among the victims and who has been one of the most steadfast campaigners over the decades.
“We got the b****** in court, and we made him f***ing sweat.” He received a round of applause.
“Soldier F has been discharged from the defendant’s criminal dock, but it is one million miles away from being an honourable discharge,” William McKinney’s brother Michael told reporters.
“Unlike his victims, there has been no declaration of Soldier F’s innocence.”
Everything went back to those initial statements, said the family solicitor Ciaran Shiels, and that agreement “served to insulate and protect them [soldiers] from any prospect of prosecution, and they knew it, and it just allowed them to murder with impunity”.
“It has resulted, directly resulted, in the Royal Military Police statements not being admissible in court, and ultimately that was how Soldier F walked free out of the back door of this court today,” he said.
Clearly, this has been aided by the passage of time, the challenges of which were also referred to in court, not least in regard to the amount of evidence that simply no longer exists.
This is a reality for other families bereaved during the Troubles, still seeking truth or justice or both. In this context, today’s verdict is undoubtedly another setback.
It is a setback, too, in the wider context of so-called “legacy issues”, which remain stubbornly unresolved, and, despite the recent, much-heralded new approach by Irish and UK governments, remain deeply controversial in Northern Ireland.
Just witness the political divide in the reaction to today’s verdict. Sinn Féin and SDLP politicians were in court supporting the families; members of the DUP took to social media to demonstrate their support by posting images of the Parachute Regiment’s insignia online.
Outside the court, the families vowed their fight will continue; their next goal, the prosecution of Soldier H for perjury.
But the likelihood is that there will never again be a trial like that of Soldier F; never again will a soldier face charges of murder and attempted murder on one of the worst days of the North’s Troubles, Bloody Sunday.
“It was a big win,” said Michael McKinney. “We took him to the wire.”
