Courts

Anonymity important to safety of Soldier F, court told

Accused would always have to ‘look over shoulder’ if identity known

The issue of the anonymity of Soldier F, who is facing two counts of murder and five of attempted murder in relation to the Bloody Sunday shooting in January 1972, is being considered in preliminary inquiry. File photograph: Frank Miller / The Irish Times

Eamonn MacDermott
Tue Jun 8 2021 - 13:09

The only British soldier soldier charged in connection with the Bloody Sunday killings in January 1972, ‘will have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life’ if his identity was widely known, a former Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI has told a court.

Alan McQuillan, a former senior officer in the RUC and PSNI, was giving evidence at the anonymity hearing for Soldier F currently being held in Derry.

Soldier F is charged with the murder of Jim Wray and William McKinney as well as five attempted murders on Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972.

Following a challenge to the granting of anonymity to the former paratrooper a hearing into that issue is currently underway.

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Mark Mulholland QC, for Soldier F, told the hearing that the threat to his client was “neither a fanciful or trivial risk”. He said that an effigy of Soldier F had been burnt along with Parachute Regiment flags on a bonfire in the Bogside in 2019 . The barrister said that this was being treated as a hate crime by the PSNI.

Calling Alan McQuillan as an expert witness due to his 30 years experience in policing, Mr Mulholland asked him for his assessment of the threat level against Soldier F.

The former PSNI officer said that for dissident republicans, Soldier F “must be right at the very top of a target list”.

He said that Derry was “the centre of the New IRA” and added that “they even tried to bomb this very courthouse”. He added that the Parachute Regiment would be viewed by republicans as “the worst regiment in the British Army” and said that Soldier F was charged with “truly horrendous crimes”.

Bloody Sunday was “such an overwhelming event”, he continued, that Soldier F would be seen as a prime target.

Mr McQuillan said that in republican eyes Soldier F was “the exemplar of evil” and would be at risk if his identity was known. He said that the fact that Soldier F’s identity was not known was part of his protection.

Outlining the security situation, Mr McQuillan cited a report that claimed that over a hundred incidents of dissident activity had been interrupted by actions of the security forces in the last number of years. The hearing continues.

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