British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will write in person to the families of the Ballymurphy victims to express his apologies for their deaths 50 years ago.
The words of Carmel Quinn, who has waited almost half a century for this day.
Carmel s 20-year-old brother John Laverty, one of a family of 12 children, was one of them.
Carmel Quinn
On 10 August, he carried his eight-year-old sister to their local community centre to catch a bus evacuating women and children to Kildare army base, telling her he would see her again in a few days time. She never spoke to him again. The day after she was taken to safety, John died after being shot in the back.
There was chaos and mayhem in many nationalist areas of Northern Ireland at the time following the introduction of internment without trial. Mass arrests led to widespread rioting and the British Army’s Parachute Regiment was sent into Ballymurphy with disastrous consequences.
A coroner has concluded that all of the ten people who were shot and killed in Ballymurphy in west Belfast almost 50 years ago were entirely innocent and that their deaths were unjustified.
Mrs Justice Siobhan Keegan delivered her findings in relation to the deaths of the ten victims over the course of more than two-and-a-half hours today.
Family members of the victims applauded after the coroner read out her verdicts in relation to each of the ten victims.
The findings were delivered at the International Convention Centre at the Waterfront in Belfast.
Mrs Justice Keegan said this has been the longest running inquest in Northern Ireland to date. She thanked the victims families on what she called a difficult occasion of remembrance .