The Ballymurphy families have expressed “deep disappointment” after the Northern Secretary Owen Paterson told them he would not order an independent inquiry into the killings by British paratroopers of 11 people in the west Belfast area in 1971.
The families yesterday rejected Mr Paterson’s view that it would not be in the public interest to hold an investigation into what is known as the Ballymurphy Massacre.
For years the families have been pressing for an inquiry into the August 1971 killings, which happened just months before the same parachute regiment was involved in Bloody Sunday in Derry. The shootings happened during the introduction of internment without trial. Among the 11 who were killed were a priest, a mother of eight children, and a man who died from a heart attack a short time after a soldier allegedly put an unloaded gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.