Ballymurphy Massacre Documentary: Coroner finds 10 victims were innocent

May 11, 2021 Jonny Lewis

In 2012 Sean Reynolds, Kyle Gibbon and myself made a documentary called The Ballymurphy Massacre which went on to win a Royal Television Society Award . Channel 4 would go on to screen another film a few years ago called Massacre at Ballymurphy but our film was the first on the subject and now after almost 50 years since the event, an inquest has found ten people killed in west Belfast almost 50 years ago in the wake of an Army operation were "entirely innocent".

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The first documentary on the Ballymurphy Massacre from 2012. Winner of RTS Award

Mourners at the funeral of one of the Ballymurphy victims

Watch our 2021 RTS Award winning film Ballymurphy Massacre below…

Today BBC News has announced Ballymurphy Inquest: Coroner finds 10 victims were innocent

Ten people killed in west Belfast almost 50 years ago in the wake of an Army operation were "entirely innocent", an inquest has found. The inquest, which began in November 2018, examined the deaths in and around the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in August 1971. The shootings happened after an operation in which paramilitary suspects were detained without trial. Victims included a priest trying to help the wounded and a mother of eight. Nine of the 10 victims were killed by the Army, the coroner said. The coroner could not definitively say who shot the tenth victim, John McKerr. Coroner, Mrs Justice Keegan, delivered her findings on Tuesday over the course of more than two hours. The killings happened over three days immediately following the introduction of internment - the arrest and detention of paramilitary suspects without trial. The court heard almost 100 days of evidence from more than 150 witnesses. These included more than 60 former soldiers, more than 30 civilians and experts in ballistics, pathology and engineering. Mrs Justice Keegan said that the effect of the killings on the families of the 10 victims have been "stark". "What is very clear, is that all of the deceased in the serious of inquests were entirely innocent of wrongdoing on the day in question," Mrs Justice Keegan said. Inquests were held into the deaths in 1972, but they were separate and returned open verdicts. The new inquests, which began in November 2018, have been held together.

BBC News