MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th May, 2021) The UK government "profoundly regrets" the events that took place in Northern Ireland's Ballymurphy in 1971, when the country's armed forces killed at least nine civilians, after an inquiry ruled earlier in the week that the victims were innocent of any wrongdoing, Brandon Lewis, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said Thursday.
Ten people, including a Roman Catholic priest, were shot dead in Ballymurphy in August 1971. After five decades of campaigning, a coroner on Tuesday ruled that the victims were innocent and that their deaths were without justification. Nine of the 10 murders were attributed to the armed forces.
"The government profoundly regrets and is truly sorry for these events, and how investigations after these terrible events were handled, and for the additional pain that the families have had to endure in their fight to clear the Names of their loved ones since they began their campaign almost five decades ago," Lewis said in a statement to the House of Commons.
The secretary of state for Northern Ireland also paid tribute to the "great patience" of the families of the victims in their quest for justice.
After the coroner's ruling on Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson "unreservedly" apologized to the outgoing Northern Irish first minister, Arlene Foster, and the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Michelle O'Neill, according to a statement published by the government on Wednesday.
Northern Ireland's so-called Troubles, a sectarian conflict that lasted for nearly three decades from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, cost the lives of more than 3,500 people.
