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Boris Johnson should travel to meet the families of the Ballymurphy victims, a former Northern Ireland secretary has urged.
Labour’s Lord Murphy of Torfaen said all governments, including the Tony Blair administration in which he served, have “let these families down” over the last 50 years.
But he went on to criticise the Prime Minister’s response to the coroner’s ruling that 10 people who died in Belfast in August 1971 were “entirely innocent”.
Last week Mrs Justice Keegan found that nine of the 10 had been killed by soldiers and that the use of lethal force was not justified.
The Ballymurphy families angrily rejected a letter of apology from Mr Johnson expressing his personal sorrow for the “terrible hurt that has been caused” by the deaths.
British Army found to have massacred unarmed civilians in Ballymurphy, Northern Ireland, in August 1971
A long-delayed inquest into the shooting deaths of 10 people in the Ballymurphy estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland has concluded that all were civilians, posed no threat to anyone, were unarmed and that nine of them were shot by the British Army. Coroner Mrs Justice Keegan could not definitively identify the origin of the bullet that shot the tenth person.
The verdict was welcomed by relatives and supporters of those killed. John Teggart, whose father Daniel was among those shot dead, addressed a press conference.
John Teggart s father Danny (44) was shot 14 times-mainly in the back as he lay injured on the ground - by the British Army. Photo taken at an event in 2014. (credit: Sinn Fein-FlickR)
May 13, 2021 09:01:02 am
Inquests into the deaths of 10 people in Northern Ireland’s capital Belfast during a British Army operation in August 1971 concluded on Tuesday that all of them were civilians who posed no threat to the soldiers, and that the use of force by the army was “clearly disproportionate.”
Between August 9-11, 1971, during The Troubles, in Belfast’s Ballymurphy area, the Parachute Regiment of the British Army arrested and detained people suspected to be members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which opposed the British rule. This was part of the army’s rounding up of suspects for internment without trial in Republican districts across the country. About 3,600 people were killed in the conflict between the IRA, pro-British “loyalist” paramilitary and the British Army by the time it ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The events of these three days are known by the survivors as the Ballymurphy massacre. While inquests had been conducted in 1
Mary Lou McDonald insists no apology was made when Boris Johnson spoke to first and deputy first ministers Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald visits the spot where Joseph Corr and John Laverty were shot during the Ballymurphy Massacre in August 1971, pictured with Mary Kate Quinn the the niece of Mr Laverty. Picture by Mal McCann 14 May, 2021 01:00
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
SINN Féin s Mary Lou McDonald has insisted no apology was made by Boris Johnson to the Ballymurphy families during a virtual meeting with the first and deputy first ministers on Wednesday.
Downing Street said the prime minister apologised over the deaths during a remote meeting with Arlene Foster and Michelle O Neill.