On Sunday January 30th 1972, British troops opened fire during an unauthorised march in the Bogside, a nationalist area of Derry. They killed 13 people and wounded 14 others, one of whom died later. The victims were all unarmed Catholics.
The Saville report – 12 years in the making and the costliest in British legal history at close to €300 million – found the civil rights protestors had been unlawfully killed and hadn’t attacked soldiers.
Here’s some of the coverage around the world…
The Australian reports…
” British soldiers should not face prosecution for their role in the Bloody sunday killings in Northern Ireland in 1972, according to a lawyer representing the troops involved.”
Newsweek reports…
“The folk memory of Northern Ireland is crowded with painful episodes, and Bloody Sunday is among the cruelest. In the space of a few hours in 1972, British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed Catholic civil-rights protesters on the streets of Londonderry. A sectarian struggle was already underway, pitting Catholic republicans against Protestants loyal to the British crown. A new bitterness had entered a conflict that was to last a further 26 years.
The New York Times says…
“On Tuesday Prime Minister David Cameron apologized for the killing of 14 unarmed demonstrators in Northern Ireland by British soldiers in a 1972 incident that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The Huffington Post says…
“The 1972 massacre that saw the slaughter of 13 unarmed teenagers and adults in Derry, Ireland by UK army paratroopers shooting at peaceful protesters has at last been exposed. The official report into the event commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 has finally been published.”
The Financial Times reports…
“The years 1970-72 were, in Northern Ireland, “years of insurgency”: an organised and audacious effort by the Provisional IRA to establish itself as a terrorist force capable of forcing “the British” out of Northern Ireland and of completing the liberation of the island of Ireland begun in the early years of the 20th century.”
CNN says…
“The British government Tuesday released a damning report into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, placing blame overwhelmingly on the British soldiers who killed 14 people in Northern Ireland that day.”
