Northern Ireland court to give verdict on soldier’s role in 1972 Bloody Sunday killings

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BELFAST (Reuters) -A Belfast court on Thursday is due to deliver its verdict on the sole British soldier charged with murder over the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” killings of 13 unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland.

The soldier, who cannot be identified legally and is known as Soldier F, is accused of killing two men and trying to kill five others when members of a British army regiment opened fire in the mainly Irish nationalist city of Londonderry.

He had previously pleaded not guilty to the seven charges and was not called to give evidence during the one-month trial that was heard without a jury.

Bloody Sunday was the deadliest shooting incident of three decades of sectarian violence involving nationalists seeking a united Ireland, unionists wanting Northern Ireland to remain a province of the United Kingdom, and British forces. A 1998 peace deal largely ended the bloodshed.

Defence lawyers did not call any witnesses and said that military statements taken over 50 years ago were manifestly unreliable, with no independent supporting evidence offered to back the prosecution case.

Earlier in the trial the court heard a short statement Soldier F gave to police in 2016, in which he said that while he was sure he properly discharged his duties as a soldier that day, he no longer had any reliable recollection of the events and therefore was unable to answer the officers’ questions.

The British government apologised for the “unjustified and unjustifiable” killings in 2010 after a judicial inquiry found that the victims were innocent and had posed no threat to the military.

(Writing by Amanda Ferguson; editing by Mark Heinrich)