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(CNN) – The investigation, which cost more than $280 million and heard from 2,500 witnesses, lasted more than a dozen years — making it the longest-running such probe in British history.
The soldiers who opened fire on Bloody Sunday insisted they were threatened by people with weapons. That’s what they told the first inquiry, which came out 11 weeks after Bloody Sunday, and they were largely cleared of wrongdoing.
Bogside Massacre aka Bloody Sunday (1972)
But ever since, the truth about Bloody Sunday [January 30, 1972] has been disputed. Relatives of the victims have long maintained their family members were innocent and were not armed.
Tony Blair announced the new investigation in 1998, less than a year after he became prime minister, saying the original government probe had been too hasty and that new evidence had come to light in the decades since the killings.
The aim was not to place blame, but to find the truth about what happened that day, Blair said.
No one was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony, but if anyone does face prosecution as a result of the investigation, their testimony to the Bloody Sunday probe cannot be used against them.
The investigation was conducted by Mark Saville, a British law lord; William L. Hoyt, the former chief justice of New Brunswick, Canada; and John L. Toohey, a former justice of the High Court of Australia.
British papers:
In just 558 words 38 years ago Britain’s then Lord Chief Justice Lord Widgery did more to damage the country’s reputation in Ireland than almost any other single act during the history of the Troubles.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."