Boris Johnson pledges to stop Bloody Sunday trial

A re-elected Tory government would halt trials against British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

A Republican mural in the Bogside area of Londonderry, the scene of the Bloody Sunday shootings. Picture: Getty Images

A re-elected Tory government would halt trials against British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

All veterans who served ­before 2000 would be given legal protection by an amendment to the British Human Rights Act to stop it be applied retrospectively and end “unfair trials”.

The act has been the key legal route by which families have sought to prove British state ­involvement in killings that took place during the Troubles.

The most controversial ­aspect of the immunity, set to be announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday morning, is how it would be ­applied to the Troubles, particularly the trial of a former paratrooper over the Bloody Sunday shootings of January 30, 1972. The Troubles ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The Tory manifesto, as reported by The Telegraph of London, says if re-elected on December 12, the government would “consider legislation that draws a clear line under the past, bringing to an end all ongoing investigations, inquests and prosecutions from the Northern Ireland Troubles”.

“We must protect our service personnel accordingly. With a Conservative majority government, the Law of Armed Conflict will be the appropriate and specific choice for military operations,’’ said Junior Defence Minister Johnny Mercer, a former army captain who served in Afghanistan. It was unclear what would happen to trials under way. About 200 veterans from the Troubles and conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq are subject to investigation and potential prosecution.

Prosecutions would be curtailed by amending the Human Rights Act, which came into force in 2000, to provide a presumption against prosecution for historical offences, when no new evidence has been produced and the accused have already been “exhaustively questioned”.

Under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights, states are under obligation to carry out some form of effective investigation into deaths where lethal force had been used against individuals by agents of the state. Investigations using the inquest system have been used by families to try to prove that their loved ones were killed unlawfully.

A 70-year-old former paratrooper known as Soldier F is ­accused of two counts of murder and five of attempted murder over Bloody Sunday. His trial is due to start next month.

A three-member judicial inquiry into Bloody Sunday, which included former Australian High Court judge John Toohey, established in 2010 that the 14 people killed in Bogside, Londonderry, in 1972 were fired upon by British paratroopers without warning.

The paratroopers “lost control’’, shooting dead people who were trying to help those who had been shot and those fleeing the scene. None of the dead had been carrying a gun, no soldiers were under threat and the troops were the first to open fire.

Then prime minister David Cameron apologised on behalf of the British government in Westminster in 2010.