Documents Reveal That BBC Axed Report on British Army Killing Unarmed Children in Derry
Documents Reveal That BBC Axed Report on British Army Killing Unarmed Children in Derry
Text: Izzy Copestake
“We could have been spared decades of hurt and heartbreak if they had admitted what they knew’
Documents obtained by the Pat Finucane Centre and analysed by Declassified UK have revealed that The UK Government successfully lobbied the BBC to axe reporting that showed that the British Army killed an unarmed child in Derry in 1972.
The documents reveal that one week after 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty was shot dead, the Ministry of Defence claimed that the soldier who killed Hegarty believed he was armed and was at a distance of 25 metres. This was a false claim. A memo sent after the incident revealed that senior personnel knew that the child had been killed at point-blank range by a “general purpose machine gun”.
The soldier who killed Hegarty, referred to as ‘Soldier B’, told an October 1973 inquest “I cocked the weapon and when the youths were about 25 metres away I aimed at the leading man and fired a quick burst” of bullets.
BBC Panorama correspondent Alan Hart interviewed a witness who stated that Hegarty was unarmed and showed no threat. After this, Hart asked the British Army in Derry for a comment on this, and the press request reached the office of the then-Prime Minister Edward Heath. The PM’s Press Secretary instructed a senior official in the Northern Ireland Office to “persuade Panorama not to include this tragic incident in the projected programme”. The BBC then did not include the segment in the show about this.
“We could have been spared decades of hurt and heartbreak if they had admitted what they knew, that Daniel was innocent, unarmed and shot at close range.” – Margaret Brady (Hegarty’s sister) in a statement to Irish News
According to reporting in the Derry Journal, Margaret Brady has now called on the BBC to locate the unaired footage. However the BBC told the Derry Journal that it would “make every effort to locate the footage… although at this point we cannot say if it still exists.”
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