Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “Soldier F has been dragged through the courts, despite a clear lack of evidence.

“There are going to be many more prosecutions brought like this because Keir Starmer plans to scrap the protections brought in through the Legacy Act. The treatment of our brave veterans brings shame on our country.”

Prosecutors accused the soldier of taking part in “unnecessary and gratuitous” violence on what became one of the defining days of the Troubles, but used unreliable evidence from his former comrades who alleged they saw him firing at protesters.

Soldier F, who was a Lance Corporal with the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment at the time of Bloody Sunday, was the only soldier to face trial in relation to the massacre. Thirteen civil rights demonstrators were shot dead during it and more than a dozen were injured.

Over the course of two and a half hours, Judge Lynch described in detail the “harrowing” events of Bloody Sunday, including survivors’ evidence of being shot in the face while running away. He said the soldiers responsible had “totally lost all sense of discipline” and “should hang their heads in shame”.

However, he said the court had failed to establish that Soldier F was “knowingly and intentionally assisting in the shootings, with intent to kill or was shooting himself with that intention”. The judge said the sole evidence against Soldier F was from two other veterans, Soldiers G and H, and said there were difficulties in relying on it.

His verdict was greeted with mutters of discontent from a public gallery packed with the victims’ relatives. Several of them walked out of the court before the hearing ended.

Paul Young, the national spokesman for the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement, said veterans would be “heartened by this verdict today”.

“Soldiers across the United Kingdom will be happy with this, and I hope that there are no more soldiers brought to the courts here with evidence that has actually no way of going through.”

James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said: “Whilst mindful of the pain felt by those on all sides who lost loved ones in the Troubles, the not-guilty verdict for Soldier F should now draw a line under this long-running case.

“I hope that we can persuade the Government to recognise the questions raised by cases that rely on evidence from half a century ago.

“In particular, by repealing our Legacy Act, far from drawing a line under the Troubles, Labour risk exposing many more elderly veterans to legal investigation in relation to events decades ago.”

The initial Widgery tribunal into the murders was dismissed as a whitewash, prompting the 12-year-long Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which cost £200m ($463m) and became the most expensive in British legal history.

In 2010, it concluded that those killed were innocent and unarmed. David Cameron, then the Prime Minister, apologised. His comments led to the murder investigation that led to Soldier F going on trial.

A total of 18 former soldiers were initially reported to Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service as a result of the inquiry but only Soldier F was charged, in 2019.

The case was dropped in 2021 when the trial of two other veterans accused of killing Joe McCann, an IRA commander, in 1972 collapsed over the admissibility of key statements made by soldiers at the time.

The prosecution resumed, however, after a legal challenge from McKinney’s family, despite that case relying on similar statements.

Soldier F’s acquittal will raise questions over why the prosecution was pursued despite no new evidence emerging in decades.

Unreliable evidence

Giving his ruling in Belfast Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Lynch cleared Soldier F of the two murders and the attempted murders of Patrick O’Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon, Michael Quinn, and an unknown person.

Soldier F sat in the courtroom behind a curtain during each day of the trial, sitting without a jury in a Diplock court, which was introduced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles to deal with terrorism cases.

The prosecution case largely relied on statements made by two of Soldier F’s comrades, known as Soldier G and Soldier H, in the immediate aftermath of the deaths, who claimed he had opened fire at Glenfada Park, Londonderry.

However, the two veterans’ statements have not been cross-examined during this trial because Soldier G has since died while H, whom the inquiry heard fired the most shots on Bloody Sunday, indicated he would exercise his right against self-incrimination if summoned.

The court heard that Soldier F had been interviewed voluntarily under caution by officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2016.

He declined to respond to questions on the basis that he “no longer” had “any reliable recollection of events on Bloody Sunday”.

Mark Mulholland KC, defending in this year’s case, said the evidence did not “stack up” and had argued for the case to be dismissed.

He compared changes in the statements given by Soldier H to the Royal Military Police on the night of the shootings, to the Widgery Inquiry later that year and the Saville Inquiry in the 2000s, and described him as an “unreliable witness”.

He put to the court that the statements of Soldiers G and H fundamentally contradicted each other in terms of who fired, where and when. He also described Soldier H as an “unreliable witness”.

He said: “At every turn, the contradictions are absolutely fundamental when one considers their bearing on reliability of the accounts that they provide.”

Veterans supported soldier in court

Mulholland said they were “swimming in this stagnant pool of contaminated fabricated evidence”, adding: “When one steps back for a moment, how does one start to distinguish fact from fiction in these accounts?”

Soldier F, a former paratrooper, was supported throughout the trial by a number of veterans who sat in a packed public gallery alongside relatives of the victims of Bloody Sunday.

Opening the prosecution case last month, Louis Mably KC alleged Soldier F and three of his comrades were “shooting at civilians as they ran away” from the violence that broke out in Glenfada Park.

He said: “The results were the casualties I have described. Two deaths and four men wounded. The prosecution case is that the shooting was unjustified. The civilians did not pose a threat, nor could the soldiers believe they did.”

The outcome of the trial is likely to prompt fresh anger from veterans who have accused Sinn Féin, formerly the political wing of the IRA, of attempting to “rewrite history”.

Pádraig Delargy, a Sinn Féin member of the Legislative Assembly for Foyle, said the judgment was a setback for the families of victims campaigning for truth and justice.

Speaking from outside court, he said: “Today’s decision is deeply disappointing for the Bloody Sunday families and the people of Derry. It represents one of the most extreme examples of ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ in our history.”

A Government spokesman said: “We are committed to finding a way forward that acknowledges the past, while supporting those who served their country during an incredibly difficult period in Northern Ireland’s history.”

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