Who was Patrick McVeigh - the dad of six whose 1972 death is now at the centre of a fresh murder case involving a former soldier?

​​The book Lost Lives, a compendium of Troubles killings, says that Patrick McVeigh had been a former member of the military himself (though it is not clear which regiment, or even which branch, he had belonged to).

He was 44, married, had six children, and worked as a welder. He was a civilian.

Mr McVeigh lived in Ladybrook Park, a long residential street of semi-detached homes off Finaghy Road North, which was an artery connecting largely-Protestant district of Finaghy in south Belfast to the Catholic-dominated Andersonstown Road in the west.

According to Lost Lives he had been chatting with members of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association (CESA) who were manning an unofficial checkpoint in the area.

The book says he was hit by submachinegun fire, and four others were wounded.

It says the victims had been approached by a car with men inside, who were later described as belonging to the MRF (though the book says this is an acronym for 'Mobile Reconnaisance Force', not ‘Military Reaction Force’).

The car then drove down the road and witnesses recalled its driver showing a pass to get through a military checkpoint.

At Mr McVeigh's inquest, soldiers from the car – who were not cross-examined – claimed they had been fired on by six men armed with revolvers and rifles.

The case was reopened in 1993, and soldiers were re-interviewed in both England and Australia, but no charges were brought.

In 2013 BBC Panorama ran a documentary of the MRF, produced by journalist John Ware.

He described the unit as having been set up to "carry out surveillance in west Belfast".

The documentary included interviews with former MRF members in disguise.

Mr Ware said the MRF was disbanded after 14 months after "a succession of incidents", but there were problems piecing together the unit’s activities – "mainly because the MRF's operational records have been destroyed, and there were of course in 1972 a vast number of shootings – something like 10,600 that year".