Soldier F pleads not guilty to murders on Bloody Sunday

A erstwhile British worker has pleaded not blameworthy to charges of murdering 2 men connected Bloody Sunday much than fractional a period ago.

In June, lawyers for the ex-paratrooper known arsenic Soldier F applied to person the case against him dismissed ahead of his trial.

Judge Mr Justice Fowler dismissed the exertion astatine Belfast Crown Court connected Friday.

Soldier F is accused of 2 murders and 5 attempted murders erstwhile members of the Parachute Regiment opened occurrence connected civilian rights demonstrators successful Londonderry connected 30 January 1972.

• A erstwhile British worker who served with the Army's Parachute Regiment successful Northern Ireland during the Troubles
• He cannot beryllium named owed to an interim tribunal bid granting his anonymity
• Soldier F is being prosecuted for the murders of William McKinney and James Wray connected Bloody Sunday
• He besides faces charges of attempting to execution Patrick O'Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon, Michael Quinn and an chartless idiosyncratic connected the aforesaid date

The determination connected whether to prosecute Soldier F progressive respective ineligible challenges and U-turns.

Having weighed up 125,000 pages of material, prosecutors said successful March 2019 that they would nonstop Soldier F to proceedings for the murders of Mr Wray and Mr McKinney, arsenic good arsenic respective attempted murders.

However, successful 2021, prosecutors dropped the case aft the illness of the proceedings of 2 different Army veterans who were accused of different Troubles-era killing.

At the time, the families of the Bloody Sunday victims said the determination was a "damning indictment of the British justness system" - their ineligible situation against the determination was successful.

The tribunal past rejected an effort by the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) to person its ain entreaty referred to the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors subsequently announced that they had decided to resume the prosecution successful September 2022.

He was returned for proceedings successful December 2023, a determination subsequently challenged by his lawyers successful June.

That proceeding was the archetypal clip Soldier F had appeared successful tribunal successful idiosyncratic since being charged.