The text, presented in May 2022, proposes to waive legal proceedings related to the Northern Irish conflict for British soldiers and paramilitaries who decide to cooperate with the authorities.
More than 1200 studies are still active
More than 3,500 people died during three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland between loyalists, mainly Protestants, and republicans, mainly Catholics. According to the British government, around 1,200 deaths are still under police investigation. For London, the law should make it possible to close hundreds of these outstanding cases.
But the bill, which is due to go through the British parliament next week, is being criticized by victims’ families, the entire Northern Irish political class, the Irish government and the Council of Europe, it recently revealed. “Deeply concerned” by the UK’s failure to resolve differences surrounding the text.
However, the legislation has been welcomed by veterans associations who feel that some veterans are being unfairly prosecuted. In November 2022, for the first time since the conflict ended in 1998, a former British soldier, David Holden, received a three-year suspended sentence for killing a man with a bullet behind a checkpoint in 1988.
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