By Iain Gray

Copyright newsletter

TUV member and fellow parachute regiment veteran John Ross organised a rally in support of the military veteran in the heart of Northern Ireland’s capital city on Saturday, He said the accused former soldier had been subjected to mental torture in the protracted process and said the case should not be going ahead. Mr Ross says the veteran and his family have been “put through misery for many years”. “He has been subjected to investigations and inquiries, exonerated and criminalised, had charges dropped and reinstated; he has been subjected to mental torture,” the TUV man told the News Letter. “He is now an ageing and ailing old soldier, and it is our belief and hope that the trial judge will end the whole charade.” Addressing the events of Bloody Sunday 53 years ago, he adds: “The threat to all security force members was real. All soldiers involved were interviewed under the agreed protocols at the time, and all were exonerated from criminal actions.” Soldier F, who cannot be identified, is accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney when members of the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civil rights protesters on the streets of Londonderry on January 30, 1972. He is also charged with five attempted murders during the incident in Londonderry’s Bogside area. He has pleaded not guilty to all seven counts. The long-awaited trial of the military veteran is due to begin at Belfast Crown Court today, in a non-jury case to be heard by Judge Patrick Lynch. Ahead of the trial commencing, William McKinney’s brother Mickey summed up his feelings. “We’re here now, at last, after all this time,” he told the PA news agency. “It’s not nervousness, it’s anticipation more so. I’m not even sure that it’s really sunk in yet that we’re here now.” A Bloody Sunday murder investigation was launched after the landmark Saville Inquiry in 2010 found there was no justification for shooting those killed or wounded. At the time of the inquiry’s publication, then-prime minister David Cameron issued a public apology. The Saville report overturned the findings of a 1972 tribunal that concluded that the soldiers had been shot at first, and returned fire in self-defence. In 2019, prosecutors announced former paratrooper Soldier F would face prosecution for two murders and five counts of attempted murder. However, two years later the case was stopped, with prosecutors fearing it would repeat the collapse of a separate legacy trial. That trial fell apart in April 2021 after a judge ruled key prosecution evidence, statements given by the soldiers to the Royal Military Police in the aftermath of the shooting, was inadmissible. The case against Soldier F also involves evidence from military police, statements from other soldiers who were on the ground in the Bogside during the shootings. The outcome of the McCann trial prompted prosecutors to review and ultimately abandon the Bloody Sunday case. But that decision was successfully challenged in court by the McKinney family, judges in Belfast quashing the discontinuation and bringing the case back.