The British government has rejected new demands to dismiss two soldiers convicted of murdering a Belfast teenager, it emerged tonight.
Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told legal representatives of Mrs Jean McBride that Scots Guardsmen Mark Wright and James Fisher will remain in the regiment. The pair were found guilty of killing her 18-year-old son, Peter in 1992.
But just two months after the Court of Appeal found the Army had not provided exceptional reasons needed for allowing both men to continue their military careers, Mr Ingram rejected calls for them to be thrown out. He said: "There are no plans for the [Army] Board to further review their employment status."
The decision, which also revealed one of the pair has been promoted to the rank of lance corporal, left Mrs McBride astonished and bitterly angry.
Earlier this week she walked out of talks with Mr John Spellar, the Northern Ireland Minister who sat on the Army Board which initially decided not to sack the soldiers.
Mrs McBride said tonight: "This is nothing other than the State sanctioning the murder of Peter. They have the damned cheek to reward the murderers by keeping them in the Army and, just to rub our noses in it, they have promoted one of them.
"Ingram and Spellar might as well have gone to Peter's grave and spat on it."
Her son, a Catholic father of two, was gunned down as he ran away from a military checkpoint in the New Lodge district of north Belfast.
The soldiers' claim that they opened fire amid suspicion that Mr McBride was carrying a coffee jar bomb was rejected and they were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1995. After serving just three years behind bars they were released and allowed to return to the army.
But the McBride family believed they had secured a major victory in their campaign when the Court of Appeal found in June that the Army Board had not produced the exceptional circumstances needed to justify the soldiers' retention.
As the family took urgent legal advice about mounting a new appeal, SDLP chairman Mr Alex Attwood claimed it was scandalous that the Government has ignored the court judgment.
"Recently, a soldier was kicked out of the Army for cheating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" he said. "The message could not be clearer: it is not on for a soldier to cheat on a gameshow, but it is all right to shoot a civilian in the back on the streets of Belfast."