copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-10-08): The British Army's locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was almost wholly Protestant.[233][234] Despite recruits being vetted, some loyalist militants managed to enlist, mainly to obtain weapons, training, and information.[235] A 1973 British Government document (uncovered in 2004), Subversion in the UDR, suggested that 5–15% of UDR soldiers then were members of loyalist paramilitaries.[235][236] The report said the UDR was the main source of weapons for those groups,[235] although by 1973, UDR weapons losses had dropped significantly, partly due to stricter controls.[235] In 1977, the Army investigated a UDR battalion based at Girdwood Barracks, Belfast. The investigation found that 70 soldiers had links to the UVF, that thirty soldiers had fraudulently diverted up to £47,000 to the UVF, and that UVF members socialised with soldiers in their mess. Following this, two UDR members were dismissed.[237] The investigation was halted after a senior officer claimed it was harming morale.[237] By 1990, at least 197 UDR soldiers had been convicted of loyalist terrorist offences and other serious crimes, including 19 convicted of murder.[238] This was only a small fraction of those who served in the UDR, but the proportion was higher than the regular British Army, the RUC, and the civilian population.[239]
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2023-11-06): 4.6 The Good Friday Agreement/ Belfast Agreement (signed 10 April 1998) [...] A useful glossary of Republican or Loyalist paramilitary groups active during the Troubles has been compiled by the CAIN archive (see section 7 for further information). [...] Army unit and army headquarter diaries include reports on the activities of loyalist and republican paramilitaries throughout the conflict. See section 5.2 for more information.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2019-03-14): Many of Britain's senior military officials cut their teeth on the streets of Belfast during The Troubles. [...] For close to four decades the British Army deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland during a period that became known as The Troubles. [...] For the British Armed Forces, Northern Ireland became a regular feature of service. Many of the most senior officers of recent times, cut their teeth on the streets of Belfast.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2023-10-02): The scale of the British army’s presence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is staggering. More than a quarter of a million troops served in Operation Banner, the army’s longest continuous campaign. [...] That the push for a quick military victory was driven in large measure by unionist pressure and the goal of placating loyalist paramilitaries who were beginning to show their strength is one of the central findings of this compelling study. [...] Bennett’s epilogue details the obstacles that were thrown up to his research, partly motivated by fears that archival sources might assist those seeking to prosecute soldiers and partly because he came to be regarded as a less promisingly uncritical chronicler of the British army than initially thought. It illuminates the ongoing struggles to shape the writing of the history of the Troubles.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-03-08): British media identified Stakeknife in 2003 as Belfast IRA veteran Freddie Scappaticci, who denied the allegations until his death last year. [...] Next month marks 26 years since the Good Friday Agreement largely ended a three-way conflict involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and the U.K. security forces that left 3,600 people dead, some 50,000 wounded and thousands bereaved. [...] The report also called on the United Kingdom and the IRA to apologize to bereaved families.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2021-05-06): Taoiseach (Irish PM) Michéal Martin has warned the UK that any unilateral move around Troubles-related prosecutions of veterans would be a "breach of trust". [...] So, as well as restricting or banning further prosecutions of veterans, this new piece of legislation would mean former paramilitaries would not be prosecuted either. [...] Four former soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles are currently facing prosecution.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-09-04): Operation Banner was the operational name for the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007, as part of the Troubles. It was the longest continuous deployment in British military history.[7][8] The British Army was initially deployed, at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland, in response to the August 1969 riots. Its role was to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to assert the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland. This involved counter-insurgency and supporting the police in carrying out internal security duties such as guarding key points, mounting checkpoints and patrols, carrying out raids and searches, riot control and bomb disposal. More than 300,000 soldiers served in Operation Banner.[9] At the peak of the operation in the 1970s, about 21,000 British troops were deployed, most of them from Great Britain. As part of the operation, a new locally-recruited regiment was also formed: the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2021-08-18): Troubles' prosecutions: Military veterans give support to Troubles' plan A group which represents 200,000 Army veterans who served in Northern Ireland says it fully supports the government's controversial Troubles legacy plan. [...] Speaking to BBC News NI, Ian Simpson from the Northern Ireland Veterans Association, said he did not support an equivalence between the paramilitary groups and military veterans.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2005-04-22): The bombing campaign of 1974 included attacks on pubs in Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich in which many civilians died alongside off-duty soldiers. Public revulsion to the bombings led the Government to pass the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974), which strengthened the police's legal powers to detain suspects. It also made membership of Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups arrestable offences. [...] Gunner Graham Matthews on his service in the Province - 1972-74 [...] While the process of normalisation continued, sectarian violence and paramilitary crimes still occurred. The main threat was from paramilitary splinter groups like the Real IRA who carried out the Omagh bombing in August 1998, killing 29 people. This was the worst atrocity of the 'Troubles'.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2019-08-13): But weeks turned to years and Operation Banner, as the Army refers to the Troubles, lasted from 1969 to 2007, costing it hundreds of lives. Paul Young was a soldier in the Household Cavalry who served in Northern Ireland during the early years of the Troubles. [...] "We didn't go out with murder in mind," said David Crabbe, who represents Decorum NI, a support group for security force veterans, and who served in the Ulster Defence Regiment.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2018-02-24): Edward Burke’s new book examines the story of British army soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. [...] More than 40 years on, many of those who served with the British army are angry about, or fear the possibility of prosecution for actions taken on the streets and fields in Northern Ireland when they were young men. Pressed by some right-wing Conservative MPs and the DUP, the British government is considering whether to impose a statute of limitation on the prosecution of soldiers for crimes allegedly committed during service there.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-09-17): Recent News the Troubles, violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. The other major players in the conflict were the British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR; from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment), and their avowed purpose was to play a peacekeeping role, most prominently between the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA), which viewed the conflict as a guerrilla war for national independence, and the unionist paramilitary forces, which characterized the IRA’s aggression as terrorism. Marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial, the confrontation had the characteristics of a civil war, notwithstanding its textbook categorization as a "low-intensity conflict." Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont. [...] Catholics argued that they were discriminated against when it came to the allocation of public housing, appointments to public service jobs, and government investment in neighbourhoods. They were also more likely to be the subjects of police harassment by the almost exclusively Protestant RUC and Ulster Special Constabulary (B Specials).
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-01-01): Voice over: As violence returned, there were fears on the loyalist side that the negotiations were merely a precursor to a full British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Loyalist paramilitaries therefore attempted to draw the Provisional IRA away from the ceasefire and back into the fight. What transpired were a series of sectarian tit-for-tat killings. Loyalists targeting catholics and, in revenge, republicans targeting protestants. It was some of the most sickening violence of the conflict. [...] Craig Murray: "The new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Roy Mason took a much harder line with paramilitaries. They started to talk of the IRA as mafia-style gangs headed up by godfathers. They reframed them as being criminals rather than revolutionaries or political activists. One of the biggest changes they made was the end of Special Category Status for prisoners convicted of terrorist offenses after the 1st of March 1976. No longer now would prisoners be able to fraternise their own colleagues, wear their own clothes, or not take part in prison work as what Newman would have called an ordinary decent criminal. This important decision would have ramifications inside the prisons in years to come."
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2022-03-02): This claim is not accurate. Prosecutions to date suggest that ex-British Army personnel have been the subject of cases five times more than Republican and Loyalist suspects. The cited ratio of 54 times "more likely" was based on a snapshot of live prosecutions and takes no account of previous cases. [...] The legal firm representing Mr Hutchings, McCue and Partners, was reported in the Telegraph in February 2020 to claim: "A former soldier is 54 times more likely to be prosecuted than a republican or loyalist terrorist". This claim was repeated in the News Letter article. [...] The legal firm’s calculation (6/361 vs 1/3,264) gave the figure of 54, suggesting an estimated ratio of ex-British Army soldiers being prosecuted 54 times more than those associated with Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2016-04-08): In both republican and loyalist paramilitaries it was women who had primary responsibility for hiding and transporting small arms and explosive materials, as the gender ideologies of Northern Ireland meant that women were perceived, at least initially, as less dangerous than men. They have been consistently less likely to be stopped and searched than men. Members of the British military previously stationed in Northern Ireland to whom I have spoken informally maintained that they knew women engaged in such activities, but that there was a significant risk of negative publicity associated with searching women’s bodies. Presumably having female military members or police officers carry out body searches of women made this less problematic, but given their lower numbers this was not always an available option. Being searched or interviewed by women rather than by men was not, however, necessarily less problematic for the women being searched. Numerous accounts report physical and sexual molestation or harassment, and implicit or explicit threats of sexual violence, being meted out by male members of the security forces with the complicity of female colleagues, or by female members themselves. [...] 47. 1998 varied from the pattern, during which loyalists were responsible for 34 paramilitary- style shooting casualties as opposed to 38 on the part of republicans.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2013-11-20): Victims condemn Northern Ireland Troubles prosecutions call - Published [...] NI's Attorney General John Larkin said there should be an end to investigations into killings before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. [...] Mr Larkin told the BBC: "More than 15 years have passed since the Belfast Agreement, there have been very few prosecutions, and every competent criminal lawyer will tell you the prospects of conviction diminish, perhaps exponentially, with each passing year, so we are in a position now where I think we have to take stock.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2021-12-06): Yet the agreement has left Northern Ireland poorly prepared for unity. Much like the Dayton Treaty that ended the Bosnian conflict in 1995, it assumes the existence of ethnic communities and thereby perpetuates them. Because the Dayton peacemakers guaranteed power-sharing, office-seekers in Bosnia have had to declare themselves Croat, Muslim, or Serb. The result has been to reward the ethnic mindset, causing even moderate Serb leaders to highlight their nationalist profile and become more sectarian. Similarly, the 1998 Belfast agreement requires elected officials to declare allegiance: nationalist, unionist, or "other." Since that time power-sharing in Belfast has meant joint governing by the leading unionist party (DUP) and Sinn Féin, and because both of those parties are proudly sectarian, they do little to bring the two communities together. [...] For Kennedy, the idea of parallelism—"we and they" equally culpable—fails in several ways. First, Britain’s government has issued apologies, for example for the Bloody Sunday Massacre. It has also spent hundreds of millions of pounds investigating killings. (Its security forces were responsible for 10 percent of Troubles-related deaths). Furthermore, Sinn Féin is the only political party that served as a paramilitary’s political wing. Finally, republican paramilitaries accounted for the lion’s share of the deaths during the Troubles (59 percent), including a substantial minority of the 1,200 Catholics who died.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2023-12-05): RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES AND LOYALIST PARAMILITARY ORGANISATIONS [...] (It should be noted that loyalist paramilitaries were usually described as ‘extremist Protestants’ or, simply ‘Protestants’ by the British authorities). [...] I have been finally confirmed in that view by the arrest of five loyalist paramilitaries on 18 July clearly en route to carry out a terrorist murder in west Belfast. Of these, four have been identified as members of the UDA.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2021-05-09): The outcome of that conflict – a nationalist Southern state that did not achieve full independence until 1949 and a Northern unionist regime which excluded its Catholic nationalist minority from power until its prorogation in 1972 – incentivised violent republican campaigns every decade from the 1920s until the 1960s, when the Troubles ushered in three decades of violent conflict. Despite the success of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in restoring devolution to Northern Ireland, low-level ‘dissident’ republican violence persists to the present day. Throughout all of these conflicts, each side accused their opponents of engaging in ‘terrorism’, although the term ‘terrorist’ was seldom used before the Troubles.Footnote 6 [...] The Northern Irish Troubles, 1969–1998
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2019-10-11): Since the agreement in 1998, it was reported that some meaningful progress on demobilization and demilitarization had been achieved: 26 base camps were either closed or demolished, the number of army patrols decreased by one-third, and more than 3,000 British troops were demobilized or withdrawn.1 Despite this success, about 2,000 extra British troops were sent to Northern Ireland to boost security during marches in the summer.2 - "Dublin Calls for Soldiers to Start Pulling out of Northern Ireland," The Scotsman, March 10, 2000. [...] Review of Agreement 1998
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2012-01-01): Ron Dudai, Informers and the Transition in Northern Ireland, The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 32–54, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azr055 [...] 54 - 71 ) [...] See the Independent Monitoring Commission, Report 19, September 2008. The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) is a body set up by the British and Irish governments to report on paramilitary activities.
Claim: A British Army veteran who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is 54 times more likely than a Republican or Loyalist paramilitary to be prosecuted for alleged offences pre-dating the 1998 Belfast Agreement. (McCue and Partners, 2020-02-25)
Evidence (2024-03-05): The issue of prosecuting former British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the [...] Most recently, in February 2024, the PPS announced that four British Army veterans would be prosecuted for murder or attempted murder in two incidents that occurred in Belfast in May 1972. [...] Crisp, "Four More Troubles Veterans Prosecuted as Cases ‘Rushed Through’ Before Amnesty Deadline," Telegraph,