The trial of a former paratrooper accused of the murder of two civilians on Bloody Sunday has heard a key witness branded a liar.<\/p>\n
Defence barrister Mark Mulholland KC claimed there had been changes in details given by Soldier H over the years, and said his evidence, which is being relied on by the prosecution in the trial of Soldier F for the murder of two men, was unreliable.<\/p>\n
The veteran, referred to as Soldier F for legal reasons, is charged with the murders of James Wray and William McKinney during disorder following a civil rights parade in Derry on January 30th, 1972.<\/p>\n
Some 13 people were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment on the day.<\/p>\n
Soldier F is also accused of attempting to murder Michael Quinn, Patrick O\u2019Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and an unknown person.<\/p>\n
He has pleaded not guilty to the seven counts.<\/p>\n
Soldier F sits in the courtroom at Belfast Crown Court behind a curtain during each day of the non-jury trial, which began last month.<\/p>\n
Key evidence in the case described as \u201cdecisive\u201d by the prosecution includes statements by two other former paratroopers known as Soldier G and Soldier H.<\/p>\n
Their accounts place Soldier F in Glenfada Park North, and allege he had opened fire.<\/p>\n
The prosecution concluded their case on Friday when the court also heard that Soldier F had been interviewed voluntarily under caution across two days, March 8th and 9th, 2016, by officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).<\/p>\n
He declined to respond to questions on the basis that he \u201cno longer\u201d has \u201cany reliable recollection of those events\u201d and made no comment to all questions put to him.<\/p>\n
Mr Mulholland criticised this hearsay evidence as \u201cunreliable\u201d, \u201cunconvincing\u201d, and contended that any conviction of Soldier F would be \u201cunsafe\u201d.<\/p>\n
Soldier G has since died, while H has indicated he will exercise his right against self-incrimination if summoned to attend the trial.<\/p>\n
During Monday\u2019s hearing, Mr Mulholland scrutinised evidence given by Soldier H from his initial statement to the Royal Military Police on the night of the shootings, to the Widgery Inquiry later that year, and the Saville Inquiry in the 2000s.<\/p>\n
He queried changes in the evidence over that time, and queried whether he had been \u201cfed\u201d information to include in his evidence.<\/p>\n
He also questioned Soldier H\u2019s stance with regards to this trial, pointing out he had given evidence to the Saville Inquiry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an unreliable witness from start to finish, it\u2019s not even a matter of being potentially reliable, this is a liar, this a fabricator, and this is the type of evidence that the prosecution put before this court,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are grave concerns over the question of reliability but perhaps even more importantly, it is the means by which we are disadvantaged because H is not in the witness box where we can challenge any account.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is indicative not only of the contradiction in his accounts, it is indicative in the contradiction compared to the civilian evidence, but it is also indicative of our loss of opportunity because this man seeks to invoke his privilege against self incrimination, which of itself is a factor that can and should take into the mix in circumstances where we now are disadvantaged in going beyond a simple question and answer, and that\u2019s the unfairness fundamentally in relation to Soldier H.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier Mr Mulholland said the prosecution\u2019s evidence is \u201cfundamentally inconsistent\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not a matter of it not supporting the prosecution case on the accounts of G and H, but in fact it is in stark contradiction to how this case was opened,\u201d he said, referring to civilian witness evidence of seeing one soldier firing by himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prosecution case, at its highest, is firing by G and F having entered Glenfada Park North together, and both opening fire in or about the same time followed by H, who himself opens fire, and of all the civilian accounts that the court has heard, it\u2019s very clear there is no support for that proposition.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, the starting point in our application is that this simultaneous firing, as found in the initial accounts of G and H, is simply not borne out by the civilian evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Mulholland added: \u201cThe problem we face is we can\u2019t look behind any of this so one is left in a state of bemusement, and the cherry-picking of certain aspects to say that equates with that \u2026 that is the danger of this case, that\u2019s the danger of hearsay evidence when it is the decisive evidence in this case.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne may scratch one\u2019s head and say what was going on in this first account. Well, when you look at the other accounts from H, the rhetoric respectful answer has to be, \u2018goodness knows\u2019 \u2013 and that\u2019s the sort of evidence to convict a man of murder?\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial continues. – PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial of a former paratrooper accused of the murder of two civilians on Bloody Sunday has heard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,27515,74715,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-122769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-pa2025","19":"tag-soldier-f-court-case","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}