The Bloody Sunday Inquiry’s long-awaited report into the most controversial incident in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” will finally be published tomorrow, with its findings set to reopen old wounds.
The 12-year-long attempt to collate a true picture of what happened is certain to stir up deep-seated emotions in the province, where peace has held between Protestants and Catholics despite a resurgent paramilitary threat.
The mammoth 5,000-page report examines the events of Jan. 30, 1972 in Northern Ireland’s second city, Londonderry, when 13 civilians were shot dead by British soldiers at a civil rights march. Another man died later from his wounds.
It was a landmark incident in three decades of violence in which more than 3,500 people died, largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The longest and most expensive inquiry in British history, which has cost £190 million (US$275 million), could trigger the exact opposite of the reconciliation intended.
The report will be unveiled when British Prime Minister David Cameron makes a statement to the House of Commons at 3:30pm tomorrow.
The families of the victims will be allowed access to the report five hours earlier.
The inquiry was commissioned by former British prime minister Tony Blair in January 1998, three months before the Good Friday Agreement was signed, to re-examine the events of Bloody Sunday.
A tribunal headed by John Widgery, the lord chief justice of England and Wales, produced 11 weeks after the incident, largely cleared the British paratroopers and authorities of blame.
Widgery’s strongest criticism was that the firing “bordered on the reckless.”
Blair launched the second investigation, saying the speed with which the original report had been produced meant Widgery was “not able to consider all the evidence that might have been available,” while “much new material has come to light” since.
The probe is headed by Lord Mark Saville, a top judge in Britain’s highest appeal court.
“The aim of the inquiry is not to accuse individuals or institutions, or to invite fresh recriminations, but to establish the truth,” Blair said.
However, the report could stoke tensions in a province where the two communities are still not fully reconciled.
Should Saville adjudicate unlawful killing in all the cases, there will likely be demands for soldiers to stand trial. If the tribunal decides that only some of the cases were unlawful killing, there could be uproar among families of the victims and if he repeats Widgery’s verdict, accusations of “another whitewash” will dominate.
The Guardian said it had learned that a number of the fatal shootings would be ruled unlawful killings.
The British government’s Northern Ireland Office dismissed that report as “speculation.”
Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, told the Times: “Our experience of inquiries is that they tend not to settle disputes — be they in Northern Ireland or Iraq — just reopen the damn things.”
Saville chaired a three-man tribunal, which also included William Hoyt, a Canadian judge who was the chief justice of New Brunswick, and John Toohey, a former justice of the High Court of Australia.
They heard from more than 900 witnesses and received statements from around 2,500 people.
The judges retired in late 2004, but those awaiting the report have been forced to wait as publication was repeatedly delayed.
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