MoD Knew Dangers Of Rubber Bullets

The Ministry of Defence knew that rubber bullets used at the height of the Troubles were dangerous, could cause serious injury and even be lethal, but withheld the information from victims, it has emerged.

Newly declassified documents from the National Archives have been revealed by a team at the Pat Finucane Centre.

The news has come about as a result of the lawyers of Richard Moore, who was blinded in L'Derry in 1972 when he was 10, after a British soldier fired a plastic bullet in his face.

Now, files have revealed the army knew that tests had been carried out and had shown the rubber bullets could cause serious injuries, or even death.

This is despite the fact that the MoD had classified the projectiles as non-lethal.

Three young people were killed by rubber bullets in Northern Ireland during 1972 and 1973.

Francis Rowntree, aged 11, was the youngest to die. He was killed in April 1972 at the Divis flats in Belfast after being shot by a British soldier.

SDLP Foyle MP Mark Durkan described the discovery as "grossly shocking".

He said: "These papers confirm that the British government really knew just how unsafe, unreliable, injurious and lethal these weapons could be.

"Their stonewalling against the well-founded complaints and arguments about the nature and use of these bullets extended to deploying monetary compensation not in a spirit of redress and truth and acknowledgement but as a tool of cover-up.

"At one level, the victims of these bullets and their families have felt and suspected something of this order all along. At another level it is grossly shocking to find that cynical malevolence corroborated in government papers.

"It is not only victims and those who campaigned against these weapons who should be incensed by what has been revealed. Ministers, politicians in the North and in Britain, officials and commentators who retailed the false justification for these weapons and rebutted the genuine concerns should also now be incensed if they have any decency."

(IT/CD)