Episode 401: Bloody Sunday - Ciarán Shiels (Part 1)

Last year, the people of Derry marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Bloody Sunday massacre. The brutal attack by the British Army on unarmed protestors left fourteen people dead and has been a source of anger and grief in the city for half a century.

Now, for the first time, following a thirty-year campaign by the victims’ families, one of the soldiers involved in the killings is facing trial for the murders of two young men, and the attempted murders of three more. Nicola Tallant went to Derry recently to meet those families, to visit the Museum of Free Derry, and to see for myself the streets where the killing happened. 

In this episode, Nicola speaks to Ciarán Shiels, who acted as a lead solicitor during the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and personally represented six of the families of the deceased and four of those wounded. Shiels grew up in Derry himself, and has close family connections to the events of January 1972. He shows me around the tight-knit neighbourhoods where the protestors lived, takes me down the route of the march, and explains in detail how the tragic scenes unfolded.

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