REACTION IN the North to the news that police are to launch a murder investigation into the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry has emerged along predictable lines.
Nationalists, in general, welcomed the news that the PSNI will investigate the shooting dead of 14 unarmed civilians in Derry at a civil rights demonstration in 1972.
Unionists, however, including First Minister Peter Robinson, said if the British army was to be investigated for its actions 40 years ago, so too should the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, who admitted to the Saville inquiry he was the second-in-command of the IRA on Bloody Sunday.
Others pointed to the cost and accused the authorities of a “hierarchy of victims”. The Saville inquiry, which lasted 12 years, was the most expensive inquiry in British legal history.
Announcing the development in Belfast on Thursday, PSNI chief constable Matt Baggott said the investigation could take up to four years and was based on the findings of Saville, which declared all the victims to have been innocent, prompting an apology from British PM David Cameron.
Mark Durkan, the SDLP MP for Foyle, yesterday said it was “proper” that the PSNI pursue a murder investigation. He said: “The police need to get on with the task and be fully equipped and resourced to do so, and any decision . . . has to be made independently of politicians.”
The UUP’s justice spokesman, Tom Elliott, said he was “absolutely shocked” at the move and called for prosecutors to also question Martin McGuinness.
Mr Elliott said: “This decision, in addition to diverting valuable police resources, will assist republicans in promoting their fantasy of a ‘just war’.”
Responding to the comments, Mr McGuinness said he had “no problem” co-operating with any police investigation and rejected claims he had been armed on Bloody Sunday. “I didn’t have a sub-machine gun,” he said.
John Kelly, of the Bloody Sunday Centre in Derry, whose brother Michael was one of the victims, said: “These soldiers should have been arrested straight away and prosecuted on what came out of Saville, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice party called the move a “patent political sop”. He said: “The security forces are to be investigated for murder, while self-confessed IRA commander Martin McGuinness continues to escape police investigation.”
