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Relatives of those killed during Bloody Sunday make their way from the Bogside to the Guildhall to read the Saville report, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, June 15, 2010.Cathal McNaughton

British Prime Minister David Cameron was required to stand in the House of Commons this week and apologize for Bloody Sunday, the shooting deaths of 14 marchers by British paratroopers in 1972. An exhaustive commission led by Lord Saville, one that consumed an incredible 12 years and nearly £200-million, has removed the shadow of blame from the victims of this infamous slaughter, and placed responsibility on soldiers who opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators, some hit in the back. British soldiers had been sent to Northern Ireland to protect citizens on either side of the religious divide from sectarian violence, and they instead became participants in a mass killing. An apology was mandated. The question of whether prosecutions should, after nearly 40 years, now be attempted against those soldiers is a more difficult one.

Northern Ireland is a special case. The peace process has emptied the prisons of IRA terrorists guilty of their own crimes carried out against innocents. The same is true for the loyalist side. All have agreed through negotiations to restore the rule of law, and implicitly to allow bygones be bygones. That is why an IRA leader like Martin McGuinness, who may have been toting around a sub-machine gun on the fringes of the march but probably did not use it (there was at least one shot directed at the soldiers), is now permitted to serve as deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. It is hard, then, to exempt soldiers from this reconciliation, soldiers who, according to Lord Saville's report, found themselves in a situation they were ill-trained and unprepared for, following commands from an officer who either misunderstood or exceeded his own orders, and at some point during the events of that day likely themselves came under fire.

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