MURDER!

That's not the word they used, but it is the inescapable conclusion of the report released yesterday on the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry.

On January 30, 1972, civil rights marchers in Derry were confronted by the English army of occupation. Without provocation the army opened fire and thirteen Irish demonstrators lay dead on the ground; another later died of his injuries.

The dead have now been utterly vindicated. A report by Mark Saville, a justice of the English Supreme Court, which took twelve years and cost nearly $300 million, concludes that the killings were unprovoked and unjustified. The report finds that the victims were unarmed, that the army targeted unarmed civilians, that the army fired without warning, and that there was no justification for the killings.

I call that murder.