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Hello and welcome to NewsHour.

It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in London.

I'm Tim Franks.

We're beginning with a most unusual court case.

Unusual because it saw a man put on trial for a

murder more than 50 years ago. Unusual also because it's become a symbol of a much wider debate

over the balance between the search for truth and the search for justice from a long-running

conflict. That's a debate we'll look at in greater depth in a few minutes.

First, though, the specifics of this trial. It took place in Northern Ireland, where for roughly

30 years up to the turn in the millennium, violence had flared. Thousands died as rival paramilitaries

launched attacks, driven by sectarian division and nationalist ambition.

The British government had quickly sent in the army to try to restore order, but what happened in

1972 and where today's trial came from was perhaps the single most infamous incident in the army's long, contentious deployment.

It was called Bloody Sunday.

Thirteen people were shot dead, 15 others injured,

when soldiers opened fire at a civil rights demonstration

in a predominantly Catholic part of the city of Londonderry.

Back in 2010, at the conclusion of a belated and very

extended inquiry into the killings, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron called the

shootings unjustified and unjustifiable. What happened today was that the only veteran ever charged

in connection with those terrible events, a man only

...