Fifty years after first soldier killing of the Troubles, veterans face trials rather than gratitude and justice

There is a grim symmetry to the fact that 2021 marks the anniversary year of the first terrorist killing of a soldier in the Troubles.

Gunner Robert Curtis was shot dead by the IRA in Belfast in February 1971. Almost 800 members of the military would also be murdered by direct terrorist action in the Troubles.

But 2021 is also probably going to be the year when the first of at least half a dozen elderly soldiers goes forward to a homicide trial for killing someone.

The IRA and other republican groups killed by far the most people in the Troubles, 2,100 out of 3,700. In only a minority of the republican killings were the culprits brought to justice, even though they were mostly known to state forces.

This was because it is hard to prove the guilt of a murderer to the criminal standard of proof required for conviction when the killer is skilled in covering their tracks.

After all the restraint by state forces who prevented civil war, who suffered a high death toll, and who knew who was trying to kill them but who stuck overwhelmingly to the rule of law (despite grossly exaggerated claims of collusion), it is beyond belief that so many soldiers face trials for single unpremeditated historic shootings. No IRA leaders do for decades of calculated murder (or ever will, many people believe).

The UK government, which has seemed adrift on legacy matters, has retreated from this scandal but still failed to get grips with it. Why has it not set up a unit to examine the wider reasons as to how this imbalance in prosecutions has come about? Why was it so apologetic over not spending millions more on a single murder, that of Pat Finucane, as to almost box itself into holding such an inquiry in the future when so many victims of terror have never had truth, let alone justice?

It has a duty to the memory of Gunner Curtis and all the other security force members who gave their lives for peace here to rectify this imbalance, regardless of whether the Irish government or local parties agree with their plan to do so.

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