The man was arrested under the Terrorism Act. (Representative)
London:
A 65-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday following the 1974 pub bombings in the English city of Birmingham, which left 21 people dead in one of the nation’s worst terrorist attacks.
The two attacks on the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs came during the escalating violence against British rule in Northern Ireland, both in the province and on the mainland.
Police said counterterrorism officers and colleagues from the Northern Ireland Police Service detained the man at his home in Belfast.
“The man was arrested under the terrorism law and a search of his home is underway,” police said in a statement.
“He will be questioned on bail at a police station in Northern Ireland,” the police added.
The attacks were largely blamed on the paramilitary group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), although it has never officially claimed responsibility.
An estimated 3,500 people, most of them in Northern Ireland, were killed during three decades of violence on both sides which was largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement.
Investigations began last year to re-examine the deaths after claiming that police disregarded two warnings regarding the attack on November 21, 1974, which left 182 people injured – one 11 days before and another on day of the bombings.
The original investigations – judicial inquiries that do not attribute responsibility – were interrupted by a police investigation that led to the wrongful imprisonment of six men for the 1975 bombings.
The conviction of the so-called ‘Birmingham Six’ was deemed dangerous by the Court of Appeal in 1991 and they were released after what is considered one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.
No one has since been convicted.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
