finished on Thursday<\/a>, had been ongoing for five weeks.<\/p>\nMickey McKinney said he attended every day of the trial, except on 9 October, when he met the PSNI with his brothers about the threat on social media.<\/p>\n
He said his brother John had contacted him to inform him of a threat made against them on social media by “someone from the Shankill Road”.<\/p>\n
“Our solicitor contacted the police and we had a meet up with them to make a statement of complaint,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I lost a night’s sleep over it. It’s in the back of my head always. It’s not a nice feeling.”<\/p>\n
He added that comments online had also insinuated that Mickey and his brothers looked like members of the IRA.<\/p>\n
“They’re hurtful comments and really a bit sickening.”<\/p>\n
However, Mickey said that they “can’t let it bother” them, and what matters now is that “justice prevails” for his late brother.<\/p>\n
“Somebody is responsible. Somebody took our Willie’s life. It should never have happened, and somebody must be held to account for it, and we’re hoping that will happen next week.”<\/p>\n
Mickey’s brother John described the threat as “bizarre”, and said it had caused him to be on high-alert when attending the trial.<\/p>\n
“We had to watch ourselves when we walked into the trial. When we used public transport, we were very conscious of people around us,” he said.<\/p>\n
John added that those behind the threat have no “empathy” or “understanding” of what he and his family have been through.<\/p>\n
“They have no comprehension that we’re people trying to get justice for innocent people.”<\/p>\n
Mickey and John’s brother Joe said that when he first heard about the threat, his main concern was for his family.<\/p>\n
“You don’t know who’s going to be watching you going over and back from the court,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s added an extra load of concern to all of us and our families.”<\/p>\n
Joe added that he does not think the threat is “representative of the Protestant community”.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the PSNI said: “We do not discuss the security of individuals and no inference should be drawn from this.<\/p>\n
“However, if we receive information that a person’s life may be at risk, we will inform them accordingly. We never ignore anything which may put an individual at risk.”<\/p>\n
The trial has now finished and the McKinney family has said the most important thing is to prepare for the verdict which will be delivered by the judge next Thursday.<\/p>\n
In a social media post, the Bloody Sunday Trust said they condemned the “despicable threat” and “fully support the McKinney family”. <\/p>\n
“No one should be threatened for seeking justice,” the statement added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brothers of one of the victims who was shot dead on Bloody Sunday have said their family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-135160","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-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135160","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=135160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}