The brother of a teenager killed on Bloody Sunday has said it was “heartbreaking” that former head of the British army, General Sir Mike Jackson was never held accountable for his actions.
John Kelly said General Jackson, who was a captain in the Parachute Regiment at the time, “created the lies which went around the world and took almost 40 years to correct”.
Mr Kelly’s brother, Michael (17) was one of 13 men and boys shot dead by the Parachute regiment while taking part in an anti-internment march on January 30 1972. A fourteenth victim, John Johnston died later from his injuries.
Mr Kelly was speaking after it was announced that General Jackson (80) died on Tuesday from prostrate cancer.
After initially serving with British military intelligence, he joined the first battalion of the Parachute Regiment in 1970. He was an officer in the regiment through Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy massacre and the killing of the unarmed Richie McKinney and Robert Johnston on the Shankill Road all in 1972.
General Jackson was adjutant to the commander of the first battalion, the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday, Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford in Derry’s Bogside on the day. Immediately after the killings had stopped, he interviewed the soldiers who opened fire. Each soldier was questioned in the back of a British Saracen armoured vehicle and a “shot-list” was drawn up by the former army commander.
In the “shot-list”, the soldiers claimed they killed and wounded “gunmen, bombers and nail bombers” although all the evidence showed that those killed were innocent. The “shot-list” was used by the British government to claim later that evening that all those killed were gunmen, a claim that remained until 2010 when the Saville Inquiry exonerated all of the dead and wounded.
As a witness at the inquest in 2019 into the Parachute regiment’s killing of ten people in the Ballymurphy massacre, General Jackson denied that there had been any cover-up over the deaths.
Mr Kelly said General Jackson’s actions on Bloody Sunday caused pain which travelled through the years not just for the victims’ families but for all the people of Ireland.
“In the moments after the killings, he drew up and created the lies which went around the world and took almost 40 years to correct through Saville,” Mr Kelly said.
The Derry man said General Jackson’s actions “fanned the flames” of the Troubles.
“It is heartbreaking that he was never held to account,” he said.
Chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust, Tony Doherty, whose father, Paddy was shot dead, said there would be “no grieving the loss of this man”.
Mr Doherty said: “For the many families that he tried to destroy, vengeance has become the laughter of our children and grandchildren. Mike Jackson’s name will sit well in the annals of imperial injustice alongside Widgery, Thatcher and Churchill.”
Foyle MP, Colum Eastwood said his thoughts were with the Bloody Sunday families and all innocent victims.
“No doubt this will bring back very difficult memories of their loved ones and the decades long crusade they were forced to go through in an attempt to uncover the truth and secure justice,” Mr Eastwood said.
