Labour Veterans’ Tsar on Resignation Watch As He Slams Plans to Prosecute NI Veterans – Guido Fawkes

Labour Veterans’ Tsar on Resignation Watch As He Slams Plans to Prosecute NI Veterans

mdi-fullscreen

Tensions between Labour’s veterans’ commissioner for Northern Ireland David Johnstone and Starmer are bubbling up over after he launched a scathing attack on the government’s plan to change the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. The plans would scrap legal protections for veterans who were involved in British Army operations in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007. And could hand out taxpayer-funded compensation to Gerry Adams and IRA suspects…

Johnstone warned up to 70 former soldiers would be forced into the dock “for doing their jobs”, blasting:

“The demonisation and this attempt to rewrite history is really why there is such a pushback among veterans. It’s lopsided, it’s two-tier justice. There’s something immoral about dragging them through a legal process, particularly when it’s clear it is just part of a wider vexatious lawfare.”

NI secretary Hilary Benn claimed that the plans would seek to “ensure compliance with the ECHR”, though as Johnstone points out, “the ECHR was not designed to be applied to terrorists. It was designed for innocent people”. Attorney general Richard Hermer has made clear his dogged commitment to the ECHR. Hermer also represented Adams in 2023 when he was being sued by victims of three IRA attacks…

Meanwhile, a petition to ‘Protect Northern Ireland Veterans from Prosecutions’ has reached 153,187 signatures and will now be debated in the Commons on 14 July. Rule by lawyers going as expected…