The mother of a Belfast teenager murdered by two British soldiers today failed in a legal bid to have the pair thrown out of the British army.
Mrs Jean McBride had applied for a judicial review of the decision to allow Scots Guardsman Mark Wright and James Fisher to continue their military careers after serving sentences for shooting dead her 18-year-old son Peter.
Although High Court judge Mr Justice Kerr accepted that the soldiers had no justification for opening fire and later lying about the incident, he still rejected the north Belfast woman's case.
Mr McBride was shot dead as he ran away from an Army patrol that had searched him near his New Lodge Road home in the North of the City in September 1992.
Wright and Fisher claimed the father of two was carrying a coffee jar bomb, an allegation later found to be false.
They were convicted of murdering Mr McBride in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
But three years later they were given early release by former Northern Ireland Secretary Ms Mo Mowlam and allowed to return to the army.
Mr Justice Kerr today accepted the findings against the soldiers were damning.
They had put forward a deliberately lying defence and had not come under any threat before firing on Mr McBride, he pointed out. However he said this did not necessarily mean they could not continue as soldiers.
The judge stressed that all soldiers who have been convicted of murder in Northern Ireland have been allowed to return to the Army after serving jail sentences.
He added: "While they were not young by army standards, the view could be taken that they were not fully mature men.
"Lying about the circumstances, although reprehensible, is perhaps not an unnatural reaction given the position in which they found themselves.
"Not without misgivings, therefore, I have concluded that the decision of the Army Board cannot be condemned as unreasonable."
PA