Criticism of Findings
One lawyer representing soldiers involved in the enquiry stated that Lord Saville "cherry picked" the evidence in his inquiry and that Lord Saville felt under pressure to give a verdict that is not borne out by the available evidence. This view was later echoed by a former paratrooper writing in the Belfast Telegraph that the Saville Inquiry was one-sided and did not reflect events of the day as he experienced them.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey also criticised the inquiry, questioning the benefit of reliving the "darkest years" of Northern Ireland's history after 40 years, and also contrasting the £190m Saville Inquiry into 13 deaths with the absence of any inquiries into the deaths of 3,600 people at the hands of paramilitary groups during the same period. This second criticism was also echoed in comments from Protestants reported in The Belfast Telegraph that the report created an unjust hierarchy in which the victims of Bloody Sunday were unfairly elevated above the more numerous victims of IRA violence.
Read more about this topic: Bloody Sunday Inquiry
Famous quotes containing the words criticism and/or findings:
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain.”
—Eugenie Clark (b. 1922)