Yahoo Finance Northern Ireland secretary ‘profoundly sorry’ for Troubles killing comments
Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley said on Thursday that she was “profoundly sorry” for saying that killings by British soldiers or police officers during the Northern Ireland Troubles were not crimes.
“Yesterday I made comments regarding the actions of soldiers during the Troubles. I want to apologise. I am profoundly sorry for the offence and hurt that my words have caused,” Bradley said in a statement.
“The language was wrong and, even though this was not my intention, it was deeply insensitive to many of those who lost loved ones.”
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Bradley said that the 10% of killings during the Troubles committed at the hand of the military and police “were not crimes.”
Authorities in Northern Ireland will announce next week whether British soldiers involved in the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings, which saw them kill 14 unarmed Catholic civil rights protesters, would face trial.
Bradley’s remarks were interpreted as an attempt to influence this legal process. The soldiers, she said, were merely people “acting under orders and instructions” and were “fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way.”
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which was established in 1998 by former prime minister Tony Blair, found that the actions of British soldiers on Bloody Sunday were “unjustifiable.”
When the report from the inquiry was published in 2010, then-prime minister David Cameron apologised on behalf of the British Government, saying he was “deeply sorry.”
Bradley faced mounting calls for her resignation on Wednesday, with leaders from Sinn Féin and Northern Ireland’s SDLP and Alliance parties condemning her remarks.
Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill said the comments were “outrageous and offensive,” while SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said they displayed Bradley’s “stunning ignorance about the past.”
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar, meanwhile, called the remarks “insensitive” and “wrong.”
In the 30 years before the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement, clashes during the Troubles took the lives of more than 3,600 people. Thousands of British troops were deployed to Northern Ireland to try and curb the violence.
Noting that the UK government believed “fundamentally of the rule of law,” Bradley said on Thursday that she understood why families wanted to see “justice properly delivered.”
“I share that aim and that is why I launched the public consultation on addressing the legacy of the Troubles,” she said.
