Kingsmills Massacre 50th anniversary: 'We will get justice - but not in this world' says brother of victim
A man whose brother was murdered in the Kingsmills Massacre will join with others this weekend to mark 50 years since the atrocity.
The attack took place near Kingsmills in south Armagh on 5 January, 1976 when the IRA gunned down 10 Protestant civilians as they travelled home from their factory jobs in a minibus.
The 10 men were Robert Chambers, 18, John Bryans, 46, Reginald Chapman, 29, Walter Chapman, 35, Robert Freeburn, 50, Joseph Lemmon, 46, John McConville, 20, James McWhirter, 58, Robert Walker, 46, and Kenneth Worton, 24. Alan Black survived being shot 18 times.
The atrocity, one of the most notorious of the Troubles, came amidst a spate of sectarian tit-for-tat murders.
A 50th anniversary service is being held on Sunday in Bessbrook Town Hall at 3pm, with a further roadside service at the Kingsmills scene on Monday at 11am.
Colin Worton was only 15 when his brother Kenneth, 24, was one of those killed.
"You don't want to think how he suffered," he said. "Just like the Nazis - they just lined them up and shot them with no evidence whatsoever.
"Kenneth would have been 74 now but he never got to see his children grow up or their families. He was robbed of all that."
A legacy inquest into the atrocity ran from 2014-24.
"I think it was a waste of time as we learned so little. But most of the families walked away when the coroner made it clear he was not going to name two or three dead suspects who already had terror convictions."
He noted that then Taoiseach Enda Kenny met the families in Bessbrook in 2015 and promised to help them uncover the full facts about the operation - which was planned and executed from the south.
"He told us they would give us everything that they had and nothing would be held back."
But after almost ten years of lobbying the southern authorities' cooperation came in the form of a secret court hearing in Dublin in 2022. However the subsequent report is forever classed as secret.
Colin added: "What good is that, if it's not going to be published, what was the whole thing for at the end of the day?"
Nobody was ever charged in relation to the atrocity. And he has no hopes of further help from either government.
"We will get justice one day, but it'll not be in this world."
He noted that the legacy inquest took ten years, primarily because the Irish government stonewalled cooperation for so long.
"If it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable, because nothing should take that long. One of the very funniest things was that the coroner would make appeals for the IRA to come forward and engage. But nobody in their right mind believed they would ever come forward and cooperate."
His thoughts also extend to the UVF murder of the three Reavey brothers in nearby Whitecross the day before the Kingsmills Massacre. In his mind they were totally innocent victims.
"I just can't imagine what it would be like to lose three members of the same family like that," he added.