BLOODY Sunday families fully anticipated legal efforts by former British soldiers to stop the PSNI investigation into the 1972 killings, a sister of one of the victim has said.
Kate Nash was responding to news that police have given an undertaking not to arrest any more former soldiers until a judicial review of their investigation is heard later this month.
Ms Nash, whose brother, William was one of the 14 civil rights demonstrators shot dead in Derry, said she was not surprised that seven former soldiers launched legal proceedings to stop the way the murder investigation was being conducted.
“We’ve been through these proceedings before; the families have been fighting for 43 years and we’ll just face up to this delay and get on with things,” Ms Nash said.
The Derry woman said police should not face any further delays in progressing their murder investigation into Bloody Sunday.
The former soldiers’ judicial review will be heard in London next Thursday November 26, according to James Madden of solicitors Madden and Finucane.
Mr Madden said the court has also decided that the Bloody Sunday families were not “persons directly affected” by the former soldiers’ application. He said the court decided the case concerned the lawfulness of anticipated arrests, chiefly because the former soldiers were willing to be interviewed in England rather than Northern Ireland.
The latest moves follow the arrest and questioning under caution of former paratrooper, Soldier J last week. Soldier J was arrested at his home in Co Antrim and questioned at a Belfast PSNI station.
His arrest was welcomed by relatives of those killed.
However, a petition calling for soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday to be granted immunity from prosecution gained more than 23,000 supporters in less than a week.
A protest march against the police investigation of the former paras is also being planned in London this weekend.
