February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Chris Thornton
BELFAST — The mother of a Belfast teenager murdered by two Scottish soldiers has vowed to continue her fight to have the killers thrown out of the British Army, despite a ruling last week that they can remain in the ranks.
James Fisher and Mark Wright were allowed to rejoin their regiment, the Scots Guards, after serving six years in prison for the 1992 murder of Peter McBride, from the New Lodge area of Belfast.
The men shot McBride in the back as he ran from their patrol.
His mother, Jean McBride, successfully sued the British Army last year, forcing them to reconsider the decision to allow the killers to stay in the army. But the Ministry of Defense in London announced that the court ordered review had come to the same conclusion.
However, Jean McBride said: "But if they think I’m going to give up, they have another thing coming. They think Peter’s life was worth nothing, shoot him in the back and forget him. We will fight on ’till these two murderers are kicked out.
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"The anniversary of Peter’s birthday is next week and if they think I brought my son into this world to have him murdered and forgotten, then they just don’t understand what it is to be a mother."
Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Mandelson said the two soldiers would not be allowed to serve in the region again.
Meanwhile, the aftermaths of two other controversial murders continued to cause political waves in Northern Ireland.
The Committee on the Administration of Justice, a human rights agency based in Belfast, lodged a formal complaint against RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan over the murder of lawyer Rosemary Nelson in 1999.
And Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan announced that she is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Robert Hamill. RUC officers allegedly failed to intervene when the Portadown man was beaten to death by a loyalist mob in 1997.