‘TRUTH LAID BARE’

All 10 Shot Dead in Belfast’s Ballymurphy Massacre Were Completely Innocent, Says Coroner

The coroner, Justice Siobhan Keegan, determined that nine of the 10 victims were killed by the British Army.

The families of the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre finally have some justice 50 years after the notorious killings. Ten people were shot dead in the West Belfast massacre, which happened over three days in August 1971, as part of a British Army internment campaign to identify and lock up IRA suspects without trial. An inquest into the killings was launched in November 2018 and came back with its findings Tuesday. The coroner, Justice Siobhan Keegan, determined that nine of the 10 victims were killed by the British Army, but it wasn’t possible to determine beyond doubt who shot the 10th victim. “What is very clear, is that all of the deceased in the serious of inquests were entirely innocent of wrongdoing on the day in question,” Keegan said, according to BBC News. After the ruling came down, Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill described the killings as “British state murder,” and said the victims and their had been “vindicated and the truth laid bare.”