This is a nightmare outcome for the Bloody Sunday families.
The words Soldier F “not guilty” are the postscript they feared.
After more than half a century of campaigning for justice for their loved ones, the only former British soldier to be charged in connection with the killings has been acquitted.
Relatives of some of those shot dead by members of the Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march on 30 January 1972 and their supporters had reservations about this prosecution because they feared this very outcome.
Not because they did not believe Soldier F should be convicted, but because they feared the passage of time and a lack of corroborating evidence would make a conviction extremely difficult.
Solicitor Ciarán Shiels gave a summary of some of those concerns outside Belfast Crown Court on the opening day of the trial.
He said Soldier F faced “a sliver” of the evidence that had originally been available, pointing out that many eyewitnesses had died and forensic evidence was not available, including the rifle used by the paratrooper on the day, which was later sold by the British Ministry of Defence.
While Soldier F has not been convicted, the families and their legal teams believe the case was worth pursuing as they had been told for decades that none of the British soldiers involved would ever stand trial.
For 26 years, that prospect was viewed as virtually impossible based on the official version of what happened on Bloody Sunday which was a report named after its author, the Chief Justice Widgery.
The Widgery Report concluded that the soldiers had been fired on first and that there was “no reason to suppose” that they would have opened fire otherwise, despite also saying the firing “bordered on the reckless”.
Watch: Northern Editor Vincent Kearney on Soldier F verdicts
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Relatives of those killed and injured and nationalist politicians branded the report a whitewash and mounted a long-running campaign for a new, independent inquiry.
The turning point came in 1997 when the Irish government submitted a 178-page dossier of evidence to the British government, which included many previously unconsidered witness statements and new information about the shootings.
In January 1998, the UK prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, announced an independent judicial inquiry into Bloody Sunday to be led by Mark Oliver Saville.
The inquiry took 12 years to complete and was the longest and, at a cost of almost £200 million, the most expensive in British legal history.
It was a damning indictment of what happened and painted a very different picture than the Widgery Report.
Mr Saville said:
– No warning was given to civilians before the soldiers opened fire.
– None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting.
– None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers.
– Many of the soldiers lied about their actions.
The findings prompted the British prime minister at the time, David Cameron, to issue a public apology to the relatives of those killed and injured.
Thousands of people gathered outside Derry’s Guildhall cheered and applauded when he described the events of Bloody Sunday as “unjustified and unjustifiable”.
The head of the British Army at the time, David Richards, endorsed the apology.
Police later sent files on 18 former members of the Parachute Regiment who were in Derry that day to Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service.
In March 2019, the PPS announced that one former soldier, referred to as Soldier F, as he was granted anonymity, would be charged with two murders and five attempted murders.
The families welcomed the decision, while expressing disappointment that others would not face charges.
Two years later, the PPS announced that it was discontinuing the case after reviewing the evidence, but that decision was overturned on appeal in March 2022.
Soldier F was charged with the murders of 26-year-old William McKinney and 22-year-old James Wray, as well as five attempted murders in Glenfada Park North in the Bogside area of Derry.
The trial began on 15 September, with Soldier F sitting in the dock surrounded by curtains to protect his identity because he was granted anonymity.
Much of the material that was considered by the Saville Inquiry was not admissible as evidence in the criminal proceedings due to strict legal rules.
The trial heard some harrowing eyewitness accounts from people who were shot that day.
But none of them could point a finger at Soldier F and say definitively that it was definitely him who pulled the trigger.
The prosecution’s case was built upon statements by two other former British paratroopers, referred to as G and H, who were in Glenfada Park North.
Both placed Soldier F in the area, and both said he had opened fire.
In his judgement today, Judge Patrick Lynch was scathing in his criticism of the actions of F, G, H, and another soldier referred to as E.
He told the court the former paratroopers had been “serially untruthful”, including claiming they had opened fire because they were threatened by people armed with rifles and nail bombs.
The judge said he was satisfied that the soldiers had intended to kill when they opened fire, and “had lost all sense of military discipline”.
He said those who were shot were unarmed and did not pose a threat, and that the soldiers “did not act in lawful self-defence”.
At that point, many of the Bloody Sunday families and supporters in the public gallery may have believed the judgment was going in their favour.
But the judge then turned to the issue of whether the court could rely on the hearsay evidence contained in the statements from G and H to convict Soldier F, who declined to give evidence during the five-week trial.
This was a non-jury trial, but the judge made clear that if there had been a jury, he would have had to advise them of serious concerns about weaknesses and inaccuracies in the statements.
He also said that the 53-year delay in bringing the case to court had seriously hampered the capacity of the defence to test the veracity of the hearsay statements.
Then, after almost two hours, he delivered his verdict.
“Whatever suspicions the court may have about the role of F, this court is constrained and limited by the evidence properly presented before it,” he said.
Judge McKinney said the evidence presented by the public prosecution service fell “well short” of the standard required in a criminal case, that of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Therefore, I find the accused not guilty on all seven counts,” he concluded.
Organisations representing former British military veterans who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and their supporters will welcome today’s verdict.
They said it was a disgrace that a former British soldier could be brought before the courts in this way, labelling it a “betrayal”.
But the reality is that 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead on the streets of Derry in January 1972 by British soldiers supposedly deployed to maintain law and order.
None of those who fired the fatal shots has ever been held to account for what they did.
More than half a century after Bloody Sunday, it is now highly unlikely that any of them ever will be.