RELATIVES OF 11 people shot dead by the Parachute Regiment in west Belfast in the hours after the introduction of internment are to meet the Northern Secretary to demand an inquiry.
Owen Paterson will receive the relatives to hear their call for an investigation of the killings of 10 men and a woman in August 1971, five months before the same regiment was deployed in Derry on Bloody Sunday.
The announcement of the meeting follows Tuesday’s publication of the Saville report.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, referring to the British prime minister’s statement to parliament on Tuesday, countered David Cameron’s claim that Bloody Sunday “was not the defining story of the service of the British army in Northern Ireland”.
“That is wrong,” he said. “The British army, British military intelligence, and a variety of British intelligence agencies, like the Military Reaction Force and the Force Reconnaissance Unit, along with the UDR and RUC, were directly responsible for 400 deaths in disputed circumstances.
“Through collusion and sectarian murders they were responsible for hundreds more.” The killings in the Ballymurphy and Springhill areas illustrated this and the families demanded the truth in the same manner as those in Derry, he added.
“In the 36 hours after the introduction of internment in August 1971, 11 people – including a local priest and a mother of eight children – were killed by Parachute Regiment in the Ballymurphy area.”
Former Conservative party chairman Lord Tebbitt yesterday urged Martin McGuinness to “open up the books of IRA/Sinn Féin” to establish the truth about the activities of the IRA during the Troubles.
Lord Tebbitt said he welcomed the establishment of truth by Lord Saville about Bloody Sunday and the closure this gave to the relatives of those who died. But he said many others were entitled to the same closure and he pressed Mr McGuinness and other senior republicans to help establish the truth.
Lord Tebbitt and his wife were both seriously injured in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, an incident he referred to yesterday as “Bloody Brighton”.
Solicitors representing the Bloody Sunday families say their clients are considering the full Saville report and the legal options available.
Peter Madden of Madden and Finucane Solicitors said: “This will take weeks. We will then meet and discuss the implications of the report’s conclusions.”