Campbell blasts legal action by Bloody Sunday families

Gregory Campbell has said a new legal action by the Bloody Sunday families “flies in the face of reality” given the lack of money available for historic investigations.
Gregory CampbellGregory Campbell
Gregory Campbell

The East Londonderry MP was commenting after relatives of civil rights marchers shot by paratroopers in 1972 launched their challenge to the scaling back of the murder probe.

Due to multi-million pound budget cuts the majority of the investigators involved in the case are to be laid off.

The DUP MP said it was entirely predictable that, despite almost £200million having been spent on inquiries already, it would not be enough.

“If the relatives of those involved in Bloody Sunday believe that their case is in some way immune from all the other cases then I think that is to fly in the face of reality.

“Many people thought that when the Prime Minister made his apology, and the Saville Report was issued, that that would be the end of the matter, and I was roundly criticised for saying this will not be the end of the matter.

“Unfortunately, so it has come to pass.”

Mr Campbell added: “I cannot see how one case, or a series of cases, can be distinguished from others. Nobody knew whenever Tony Blair agreed to the [Saville] inquiry that it was going to run into almost £200m worth of inquiry.

“There are those who will pursue this to the nth degree and I’m afraid this legal challenge falls into that same category. We shall all wait with interest to see what the outcome of this will be because obviously if there was any prospect of success for this, then there would be a queue of other people who will say ‘we haven’t even had what the Bloody Sunday families have had’.”

He said it could pave the way for those families to lodge similar challenges to initiate renewed investigations.

Solicitor Peter Madden, who represents most of the Bloody Sunday families, said: “We have today lodged judicial review proceedings challenging the decision by the chief constable to effectively end this multiple murder investigation. We are taking these proceedings on behalf of 20 of our clients who are the next of kin of those murdered, the wounded and the families of the wounded who have since died.”