Bloody Sunday March Committee: 'Real Bloody Sunday murderers were not even in the dock'

Kate Nash, the former chairperson of the Bloody Sunday March Committee said "the real Bloody Sunday murderers were not shaking in their boots as they waited for the verdict in the Soldier F case".

Ms Nash made her comments immediately after a 'not guilty' verdict was delivered in the case against Soldier F in Belfast's Crown Court this morning.

The former member of the British Army's Parachute Regiment had been facing murder charges relating to Jim Wray and William McKinney and attempted murder charges in relation to Michael Quinn, Patrick O'Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and an unkinwn person.

Ms Nash added: "The real Bloody Sunday murderers were not even in the dock. Soldier F and his kill-crazy comrades in Rossville Street, Abbey Park and Glenfada Park didn’t decide on their own to spray bullets into unarmed marchers demonstrating for civil rights.

"If justice were to be done there would have been cabinet ministers, top civil servants and an array of generals standing shoulder-to-shoulder with F in court, just as they’d all willingly backed one and other up in 1972.

"The Bloody Sunday massacre was planned and authorised by men of far higher rank than the scruffs like Soldier F who pulled the triggers.

"F and the other killers merely did what was expected of them, what they’d been ordered to do, what they’d repeatedly done before in the far-flung reaches of Empire to the enthusiastic applause of the British military and political establishment and their camp-followers in the media. Now they had been sent from Belfast to fulfil the same role- to teach the natives of Derry a lesson they wouldn’t forget by shooting the civil rights movement off the streets," said Ms Nash.

Bloody Sunday: Soldier F 'not guilty' of murdering James Wray and William McKinney

Former member of British Army Parachute Regiment 'not guilty' of Bloody Sunday killings

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"There’s a vast difference in scale between what happened in Derry on Bloody Sunday and what’s happening now in Gaza.  But the principle is the same. And so is the deep complicity of Britain’s ruling class. Nothing’s changed in that respect.

"What we have learnt from all the investigations into Bloody Sunday, including the trial of Soldier F, is that the British government couldn’t care less about the lives of the working-class people of our area, or of any working-class community anywhere.

"We find in Israel the same cynical acceptance, even approval, of the relentless slaughter of Palestinians by heavily-armed Israeli forces operating from land, sea and air. The Israeli death machine grinds on, supplied and serviced by the US, Britain and a cabal of other European powers," said Ms Nash.

She added: "The fact that only one soldier was charged for Bloody Sunday tells its own story about the attitude of successive British governments towards killing done in their name. They’d do it again in a heartbeat if they thought the interests of their own sort were at stake.

"The fact that Soldier F was charged at all was due to the dogged campaigning of the relatives of the victims and their supporters over the years.

"The message from the verdict to the families of other victims of State forces is to keep on keeping on.

"The Bloody Sunday march next January will mark 54 years since the massacre. We intend to make it the biggest yet."