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27 April 2016

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Derry earmarked in secret 1972 ‘counter-terrorism’ report to test lethal plastic bullet


INVESTIGATORS have uncovered confidential British Army documents revealing that as early as 1972 the British Ministry of Defence was intent on using Derry as a testing ground for the new plastic bullet that was being developed to replace the less-effective rubber bullet.

Paper Trail is a social enterprise and charity specialising in retrieving information for families, human rights groups and lawyer buried in archives.

Leading Paper Trail researcher Ciarán Mac Airt has found that A. W. Stephens of the British Army’s “DS10 counter-terrorism unit”, in a report dated 4 May 1972, said the rubber bullet’s “accuracy nor its terminal effect is sufficient” and should be replaced by the plastic bullet “which is intended for use against the hooligans in Londonderry”.

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Citing the case in 1972 of Belfast schoolboy Francis Rowntree as an example of how the inaccurate rubber bullet could be dangerous, it is clear the British authorities were building a case for the introduction of the new plastic bullet as a ‘safer’ weapon to be used “under the strictest of conditions and controls”.

However, as we have seen with the deaths of 17 people killed by rubber and plastic bullets, most of them children, the “strictest of conditions and controls” did not apply.

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