Aontú will name British Soldiers who Murdered on Bloody Sunday if Tory Legacy Bill is Passed
Aontú leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has stated that his party will be left with little choice if the Tory Legacy Bill comes into law in Westminster. He stated;
The North of Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill is winding its way through the House of Lords in Britain. The purpose of this Bill is to provide an amnesty to the British Military for murders they committed in Ireland. It allows British state forces to get away with murder in the north of Ireland.
It’s a grossly unjust Bill that will deny truth and justice from families that battled for, in certain cases, a ½ a century, to find out why and how their loved ones were murdered. It is contrary Human Rights law and is a threat to the Good Friday Agreement. These families have suffered so much for so long to get to the truth. In many cases the battle has become intergenerational with grandchildren now leading campaigns for the truth.
Its clear to me that this Amnesty Bill is a direct continuation of the British State policy to murder these people and to cover it up at the time. 50 years may have passed in some cases but the same unlawful instincts are front and centre in the British approach.
Over the last year Aontú has met with Congressmen and Women in Washington DC and with MPs and members of the House of Lords in London in an effort to try and create as much pressure as possible to make the British Government see sense. Aontú has also urged the Irish government to go on the record now that they will bring the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights if the British proceed with this Bill.
An outcome of this Bill would be that in all the massacres that British Government were involved in, the names of the murdered would be known but the names of there murderers would not.
Naming alleged murderers in the Dáil would not be something that I would normally countenance. A court of law is the place where evidence is weighed up. Naming alleged murders could also be used by the defence as potentially damaging the right to a fair trial. In a liberal democracy an accused has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court. But a normal liberal democracy does not murder its citizens. A normal liberal democracy does not give an amnesty to those murderers. A normal liberal democracy does not pass a law such as this.
It would be a gross injustice for these families if the perpetrators of these murderers die in anonymity We would have no choice have no choice but to put the names of the murders on Bloody Sunday into the public domain in Leinster House.
CRÍOCH
