Today’s Defence news includes reporting on the First Gulf War Memorial and British soldiers who are expected to be questioned by police over the Bloody Sunday shootings.
Bloody Sunday
The Daily Telegraph reports that more than a dozen retired British soldiers are likely to be questioned by police next month over the Bloody Sunday shootings. The paper writes that up to 15 soldiers are expected to be interviewed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in March as part of a murder inquiry into events in 1972 that led to the deaths of 13 civilians.
An MOD spokesperson said:
It is MOD policy to cooperate fully with all judicial processes in the UK and a number of former soldiers have been written to seeking their assistance with PSNI’s Bloody Sunday criminal investigation and the Ballymurphy inquest. It would not be appropriate to comment further on the details of either ongoing investigation.
First Gulf War Memorial
The Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror all cover the opening of a new memorial for the First Gulf War at the National Memorial Arboretum. The article in The Times states that the veterans had to pay for the memorial themselves and says that there is anger among some that the MOD did not help fund the memorial.
An MOD spokesperson said:
We continue to honour the contribution of all those who served in the First Gulf War. The Government supported the installation of a National Gulf War Memorial at St Paul’s, where a service was held on Friday with veterans, HRH the Duke of Kent and Lord Howe. We are also supporting the creation of a memorial in Central London to all those UK Personnel who participated in and supported the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan from the First Gulf War onwards.
Steel
The Daily Mirror reports on the ‘Save our Steel’ campaign, saying that a total of 4,000 tonnes of steel is being used for the £348 million build of Royal Navy warships and says that the MOD has admitted that 2,400 tonnes is coming from Sweden, 400 tonnes from Spain and 800 tonnes from the UK.
A Government spokesperson said:
No-one should be in any doubt that – across all of Government’s major procurements – we are working hard to make sure that wherever possible, British steel suppliers have a fighting chance of competing for and winning contracts.
UK suppliers have provided significant quantities of steel for major defence equipment procurement programmes and new government guidelines will help UK steel suppliers to compete effectively with international suppliers for major projects, including those in defence.