Two army veterans acquitted of Joe McCann’s murder after judge ruled some evidence inadmissible
Two former British army paratroopers accused of murdering an Official IRA commander during the Troubles have been acquitted after their trial in Northern Ireland collapsed.
The two veterans, known as soldiers A and C, had been accused of murdering Joe McCann on 15 April 1972, in a closely watched trial with political ramifications.
Continue reading...Army veteran Diane Allen tells MPs that women are coerced to withdraw harassment complaints
Women who serve in the armed forces find that they face “a hostile environment” when they are victims of bullying or harassment and try to complain, according to candid testimony given to a parliamentary committee on Thursday.
Diane Allen, who served for 30 years in the British army, told MPs that women were often pressed to withdraw their complaints, reflecting what she said were “mixed messages” from the defence leadership.
Continue reading...Campaigners say veterans should also get compensation for injustice they suffered and pensions restored
Thousands of British military personnel who were dismissed because they were homosexual will be able to have their service medals restored if they had been taken away when they were kicked out of the armed forces.
Gay rights campaigners welcomed the move as the “first step on a journey” but said that issues such as enduring criminal records, lost pension rights and still blemished service records now needed to be dealt with by the Ministry of Defence.
Continue reading...Attorney general’s decision comes after campaign by families of six men allegedly shot by British army in 1973
The attorney general for Northern Ireland has ordered a new inquest into the deaths of six men allegedly shot by the British army in Belfast in 1973.
Families of the men, known as the New Lodge Six, for the area where they died, have campaigned for an inquest for decades. They hope the coroner will be able to force the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Ministry of Defence to submit documentation and compel any surviving soldiers to face cross-examination.
Continue reading...Campaigners seek inquiry into whether skills gained in UK were used to commit abuses in countries such as Bahrain, China and Saudi Arabia
The UK government has trained the armies of two-thirds of the world’s countries, including 15 it has rebuked for human rights violations.
An anti-arms trade organisation has called for an investigation into the use of UK military training by other countries to determine whether it has been used to perpetrate human rights abuses.
Continue reading...Judge tells eight who served in Iraq and Afghanistan that courts not concerned with misadministration
Eight Fijian-born soldiers who served with the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed in a legal effort to overturn what they say were bureaucratic errors that have left them living illegally in the country they once served.
The group were refused leave for a judicial review of their cases by Mr Justice Garnham, who concluded the veterans had made their claim too late and that the courts were concerned with “illegality not misadministration” or an “unfocused idea of fairness”.
Continue reading...Eight Fijian-born soldiers went public five months ago and have yet to receive positive response
Eight Fijian-born soldiers who served with the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan are seeking a judicial review against the Ministry of Defence and Home Office, saying bureaucratic errors have made them illegal immigrants in the country for which they once served.
The group of Commonwealth veterans have been forced to go to court five months after first going public because neither Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, nor Priti Patel, the home secretary, have yet responded positively to their initial complaint or properly reviewed their cases.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Thomas Lishman charged with prominent local figures in ‘landmark human rights case’
A former British army officer is facing up to 13 years’ imprisonment in Romania for facilitating an ayahuasca ceremony in which the hallucinogenic Amazonian healing medicine was consumed by prominent figures, including the former head of the country’s secret police.
Thomas Lishman, 58, was arrested on 15 December last year as police and special forces raided a retreat centre outside Bucharest at dawn. It followed an evening where attendees sat in a circle meditating and drinking ayahuasca, a brew which is said to lead to mystical life-changing experiences. Some were later taken to hospital to provide blood samples.
Continue reading...Welsh Guards stage unique ceremony to replace trooping the colour during lockdown
The Queen’s official birthday has been marked with a brief ceremonial tribute by the military under physical distancing measures.
Soldiers from the Welsh Guards, who a few weeks ago were staffing coronavirus test centres, staged the unique event in the grounds of Windsor Castle, as the head of state made her first official public appearance since lockdown was imposed.
Continue reading...The long-held belief about the UK’s highest award for valour may have originated in speculation by the press, research has found
The Victoria Cross, or VC as it is popularly known, is the most cherished award in the British armed forces, awarded since 1857 for courage displayed “in the presence of the enemy”.
Its long history is filled with true stories of great bravery. But one long-held belief – that Victoria Cross medals were made from enemy guns captured during the Crimean war against Russia – is unlikely to be true, and originated instead from speculation in the press, according to new research.
Continue reading...John Healey says number of tests on frontline personnel should be made public
The shadow defence secretary called on the government to do “everything it can” to protect the British armed forces from coronavirus – and make public the number of times service personnel have been tested for the disease.
John Healey wrote to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, amid concerns about a lack of transparency with the British military and after serious outbreaks of the respiratory disease on US and French warships.
Continue reading...Legislation to stop ‘vexatious’ claims excludes alleged crimes by military personnel in Northern Ireland
A five-year time limit on bringing prosecutions against soldiers and veterans who have served abroad – except in “exceptional circumstances” – is to be imposed under legislation introduced by the government.
Clauses in the overseas operations (service personnel and veterans) bill would protect serving and former military personnel from what the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, claimed was a “vexatious” cycle of claims and re-investigations.
Continue reading...Emmett McConomy, whose 11-year-old brother died in 1982, said cases ‘not going away’
A man whose 11-year-old brother was killed by a soldier in Northern Ireland nearly 40 years ago has warned that victims’ families “were not going to go away” if the British government tried to introduce an amnesty for military personnel.
Emmett McConomy, whose older brother Stephen was shot in the back of the head with a plastic bullet, said the new Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, needed to understand the strength of feeling among families who had not yet seen cases involving British soldiers come to court.
Continue reading...Concerns persist despite MoD initiatives to tackle racism, Guardian call-out shows
Serving soldiers from BAME backgrounds who spoke to the Guardian about their experience of the armed forces say the days of daily abuse and overt name-calling are gone, but instead it has been replaced with “subtle racism”.
“Comments such as ‘people like you’, ‘you people from the colonies,’ or ‘passport seeking’ are still uttered in plain hearing,” said one veteran serviceman, who described his experience over more than a decade in the ranks as “nothing but traumatic”.
Continue reading...Nicola Williams urges MoD to do more to tackle ‘depressingly frequent’ racism
Incidents of racism in the armed forces are happening with “increasing and depressing frequency”, its official ombudsman has warned.
Nicola Williams, the service complaints ombudsman for the armed forces, called on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to do more to tackle racism among service personnel.
Continue reading...Alleged evidence implicates UK troops in murder of children in Afghanistan and Iraq
The UK government and the British army have been accused of covering up the killing of children in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Leaked documents allegedly contain evidence implicating troops in killing children and the torture of civilians.
Continue reading...Field Marshal Lord Bramall, who has died aged 95, was chief of the defence staff from 1982 until 1985, the pinnacle of a long military career that began just in time to land him on the beaches of Normandy as a freshly minted second lieutenant in the D-day invasion of June 1944.
But in March 2015 he was drawn into the saga of claims of historical paedophilia and child abuse in high places that began with the unmasking of Jimmy Savile in 2012. Bramall’s cottage in a village near Farnham, Surrey, was raided by police as part of a co-ordinated initiative that also included the homes of Lord (Leon) Brittan, the former home secretary, who died in January 2015. All this was part of Operation Midland, set up by the Metropolitan police in response to allegations against a number of notable public figures.
Continue reading...UK government urgently seeking information after Stena Impero veered into Iranian waters
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed on Friday evening to have seized a British oil tanker, the Stena Impero, which suddenly veered off course and headed into Iranian waters.
The ship’s owners issued a statement saying that at 3pm GMT (7pm local time), the ship had been “approached by unidentified small crafts and a helicopter during transit of the strait of Hormuz while the vessel was in international waters”.
Continue reading...Minister says full investigation into the matter would require ‘extensive resources’
The government has quietly ruled out compensating black African veterans of the second world war who were paid a third as much as their white counterparts.
Following months of silence since the Guardian and al-Jazeera first revealed the discriminatory policy, the defence minister Tobias Ellwood has privately told MPs there were “no current plans to take forward any further investigations of this matter”.
Continue reading...Follow live updates as world leaders join veterans to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in Normandy
The Élysée Palace is live streaming the ceremony.
EN DIRECT | Cérémonie franco-américaine au cimetière américain, Colleville-sur-Mer. #DDay75https://t.co/zh7bfyDifa
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