UVF pub blast sparks probe
A 1971 loyalist bar bombing which killed 15 people is to be raised in the House of Commons.
The Historical Enquiries Team's report on the massacre at McGurk's bar is being put on the spotlight by a Scottish MP whose great-uncle died in the blast.
Child deaths
The UVF's December bomb killed 15 Catholic civilians in the New Lodge area of north Belfast - the largest loss of civilian life in a single incident until the Omagh bomb.
Two children and three women were among those killed as the no-warning blast ripped through the bar, including the proprieter's 14-year-old girl.
Innacurate
An HET document dismissed British Army claims at the time that it was an IRA device which went off prematurely as "irresponsible and innacurate".
The group - which is investigating more than 2,000 unsolved murders during the Troubles - found the authorities' claim "could not be based on facts but instead reflected a desired outcome".
A UVF getaway driver received 15 life sentences in 1978 over the bombing.
Grief
The Army claims at the time that it was down to the IRA upset grief-stricken relatives of the victims.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward has already written to apologise to Scottish Labour MP Michael Connarty.
He said the gesture was also to show his concern for all victims of the Troubles.
Apology
Mr Woodward added: "The tragedy of the Troubles is that any of those people died, and one of the things that politicians have to get much better at is actually taking on their responsibility as a secretary of state and saying, I'm sorry.
"Michael has a relative who was in that bar. I am sorry his relative died. I am sorry for the extraordinary additional pain they suffered from the descriptions at the time of who was behind the bomb."
The Army claim it was a botched IRA job came despite eye-witness evidence which pointed to loyalists.
Documents recently emerged to show that military advisers told politicians the bomb was in the hands of one of the customers and urged them to make this public.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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