Sinn Fein: Bloody Sunday A Massacre Of Innocent People

A Sinn Fein MLA has hit out at the comments of a former British soldier who described Bloody Sunday as a "job well done".

The former paratrooper is under investigation for his part in the massacre, when 13 people died after soldiers opened fire in L'Derry on 30 January 1972.

Another person died later from their injuries.

Sinn Fein MLA Raymond McCartney, who is a member of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said the soldier's comments which he made on a BBC Radio 4 programme have reignited the hurt and pain felt by the victim's families and portrays an ongoing attitude within the British forces that seeks to lay the blame for the deaths at the doors of those who lost their life.

"These comments are offensive and extremely hurtful to the families of those who died on Bloody Sunday," the Foyle MLA commented.

"They also fly in the face of the findings from the Saville Inquiry which clearly demonstrated how the victims had been murdered by the British Army. This was not a job well done. It was a massacre of innocents.

"The very fact that someone who was involved in the events of that day, and has been arrested by the PSNI team investigating Bloody Sunday, should feel justified in making these comments also goes a long way to explaining the kind of attitudes that still exist within the British military and establishment.

"They want to blame victims for their own murder rather than accept British culpability for crimes committed in Ireland. This is an attitude which has been actively promoted at the highest levels of the British Government – including by the British Prime Minister – through false claims that legacy investigations are skewed against former state forces."

Mr McCartney continued that the comments made by the soldier "cannot go unchallenged" and that British soldiers guilty of murdering Irish civilians are not worthy of any immunity or impunity.



(JG/CM)