Verdict due in trial of Soldier F charged with murders

A verdict is expected on Thursday in the trial of a former British soldier accused of murdering two people on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972.

The former member of the Parachute Regiment has denied two murder charges and five counts of attempted murder.

His identity has been protected by a court order and he is known only as Soldier F.

Thirteen people were shot dead on Bloody Sunday in January 1972 at a civil rights demonstration in the Bogside area of Derry.

A large group of relatives and friends of those who lost their lives on Bloody Sunday left in a bus from the Bogside on Thursday morning for the court hearing in Belfast.

Caroline O’Donnell, whose father Patsy was shot and wounded in the shoulder in Glenfada Park, said she and her family were lucky that her father survived the shootings and was able to return home after three weeks in hospital.

“But I don’t think he ever recovered,” she added.

She said that even now she becomes “tearful” when she thinks about the loss of life suffered by the other families.

Soldier F was charged with the attempted murder of her father.

He died in 2006 from cancer and had given evidence to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, but did not live long enough to hear the findings from Lord Saville which declared that those who took part in the Civil Rights march were innocent.

“He lived under that cloud that they were all gunmen,” she said.

Ms O’Donnell said she had a wonderful father and all her friends would tell her that they’d wished he was their father too when they would visit their home.

“He just had so much love and affection,” she said. “The best father you could ever wish for.”

Ms O’Donnell said she was realty anxious on Thursday but full of hope.

“My daddy got to come home and I have become friends with other families whose daddies didn’t get to come home and I feel guilty all the time.”

She said her father was a humble, quiet gentleman and his life revolved around his wife and family.

But she said her father never liked crowds from that day forward and wasn’t the same person again.

“He couldn’t go out anymore after Bloody Sunday.”

Mickey McKinney lost his 26-year-old brother William on Bloody Sunday and he said that he was hoping that the judgement would “come down on our side”.

He said his brother’s death had a serious impact on their family and “totally wrecked my mother and father (Mickey and Annie) and they were devastated”.

He said William was the eldest son in the family and growing up after the events of that day he witnessed the pain and the grief that his parents had to go through.

He said his mother Annie would cry in private and not in front of her sons as she was afraid of pushing them into the hands of the IRA in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.

He said it was very important to campaign for justice as his brother was a human being and was an important person in their family – as was everyone else who lost loved ones and who suffered in the same way.

“There wasn’t a proper police investigation, and the government just covered it all up,” he said.

A public inquiry, which concluded in 2010, found that none of those killed during Bloody Sunday posed any threat to the Army.

Soldier F is the only military veteran who has been prosecuted over the shootings.

He is accused of murdering James Wray, 22, and William McKinney, 26.

The five charges of attempted murder relate to two teenagers at the time – 16-year-old Joe Mahon and 17-year-old Michael Quinn – as well as Joseph Friel, who was 20, Patrick O’Donnell, 41, and an unknown person.

The case is being heard by a judge sitting without a jury at Belfast Crown Court.

Last week, Judge Patrick Lynch rejected an application by defence lawyers to have the case dismissed because they claimed key prosecution evidence was unreliable.

The trial began on 15 September and lasted five weeks.

To protect his identity, Soldier F was screened from public view throughout the proceedings by a dark curtain around part of the dock.

The decision to charge Soldier F was taken by the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in 2019.

He was one of 18 former soldiers reported to the PPS as a result of a police investigation, which followed the public inquiry into Bloody Sunday conducted by Lord Saville.

But he was the only one charged.

Two years later, the PPS dropped the case after the collapse of the trial of two other veterans who had been accused of a 1972 murder in Belfast.

But the prosecution resumed in 2022 after a legal challenge.