MoD to compensate Bloody Sunday victim families
The Ministry of Defence is preparing to pay compensation to relatives of those killed or injured by soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland.
Fourteen people died after paratroopers opened fire in January 1972 during a civil rights protest in Londonderry.
Prime Minister David Cameron has already apologised to victims and said the shootings were wrong.
An MoD spokesman said: “We acknowledge the pain felt by these families for nearly 40 years, and that members of the armed forces acted wrongly. For that, the Government is deeply sorry.
“We are in contact with the families’ solicitors and where there is a legal liability to pay compensation we will do so.”
But this morning relatives of one of the Bloody Sunday victims firmly rejected the compensation offer.
Sisters Linda and Kate Nash, whose teenage brother William was among 14 men who died after paratroopers opened fire on civil rights protesters in Londonderry in January 1972, said: “I find it repulsive.”
The Nash sisters said they would not take money for personal financial gain.
“Not under any circumstances will I ever accept money for the loss of my brother,” they said. “I find it repulsive, taking anything from the MoD. If the MoD wants to set up bursaries they can, but not in my brother’s name.”
Lord Saville drew up a landmark report last year which criticised the Army over the killings.
His panel ruled that the Army fired first and without provocation.
It found all 14 who died and the others who were injured almost four decades ago had been unarmed and were completely innocent.
The troops had also continued to shoot as the protesters fled or lay fatally wounded on the ground. One father was shot as he went to tend to his injured son, the mammoth 5,000-page report revealed.
Soldiers later insisted they had only retaliated, in a bid to cover-up the truth, the document – described as “shocking” by Mr Cameron – said.
“We found no instances where it appeared to us that soldiers either were or might have been justified in firing,” it said.
“Despite the contrary evidence given by soldiers, we have concluded that none of them fired in response to attacks or threatened attacks by nail or petrol bombers. No one threw or threatened to throw a nail or petrol bomb at the soldiers on Bloody Sunday.”
Bloody Sunday was one of the worst state acts of the conflict and helped ignite 30 years of violence by the IRA.
Victims have spent years campaigning for justice and the revision of an original probe into the massacre which they branded a whitewash.
