A former British soldier has gone on trial for shooting a man in Northern Ireland in potentially the last prosecution before the amnesty on Troubles killings comes into effect.
David Holden, 52, is accused of the manslaughter of Aidan McAnespie, who was killed shortly after crossing a border checkpoint in February 1988.
McAnespie had been walking to a Gaelic football match when Holden fired three shots from his machine gun, one of which ricocheted off the road and struck the 23-year-old in the back.
Holden, then a teenager in the Grenadier Guards, denies the charge and says he fired by accident when his finger slipped, something which was described as “not credible” by the prosecution on the first day of the trial.
The trial is a significant moment in Northern Ireland. Last year ministers announced plans to introduce a statute of limitations on killings that took place before 1998. The amnesty, which will spare former soldiers and terrorists, has been condemned by all the major political parties, but welcomed by veterans.
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Yesterday, Sean McAnespie, the victim’s brother, said that “every grieving family deserves a chance for justice”.
“We have been forced to wait in purgatory for the past 34 years without any real opportunity for closure, but you never give up,” he said. “The passage of time has not diminished the pain of losing Aidan. The trial is the justice system having the freedom to do its job.” The trial is taking place at Belfast crown court without a jury.
Ministers have struggled to bring forward the Troubles Bill because of the congested parliamentary timetable. It is not now expected before the Stormont elections in early May.
Ciaran Murphy QC, for the prosecution, said that Holden had behaved with gross negligence and he questioned his defence that his hands were wet and had slipped.
Murphy said that Holden had been told by colleagues just moments before pulling the trigger that McAnespie was a “person of interest”.
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“The fact that two of the three shots fired landed within yards of Mr McAnespie, someone whom the defendant accepted he was interested in and concerned he was a member of the IRA, support the inference that the defendant was training his gun in the region of the deceased at the time he engaged the trigger,” he said.
Amnesty International has described the prosecution as the “last Troubles trial”. Grainne Teggart, its Northern Ireland campaigns manager at Amnesty International UK, was outside the court to protest against the government’s plans for a statute of limitations. “The government must abandon their plans and ensure the rights of all victims are vindicated,” she said.
The trial continues.
