S.A.S. men to face Lister murder count

Press, 3 February 1979, Page 7

S.A.S. men to face Lister murder count

; NZPA-Reuter Ulster Two soldiers of the British Army's undercover Special Air Services Regiment will be charged with murdering a youth who walked into an army ambush, the Northern Ireland police say. John Boyle, a 16-year-old Roman Catholic, had found an Irish guerrilla arms cache in a graveyard near his home last July and reported it to the police. Some time later he went back to look at the hoard, and was killed. A post-mor-!tem examination found he was hit in the back by three high-velocity bullets. The British Army said at the time that troops had opened fire because Boyle had walked up to the gun hoard, picked up an Armalite rifle, and pointed it at a soldier crouching nearby. The case is one of several which haqe aroused concern in Northern Ireland recently. Undercover surveillance has been on the increase as the British Army comes to grips with the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

r A 23-year-old wildfowler, James Taylor, was killed i last October by soldiers who' 1. apparently mistook him for I a guerrilla. * An earlier incident which '■caused protests was the 1 death of an innocent passerby, William Hanna, when soldiers ambushed three ProJ | visional I.R.A. guerrillas! jwho arrived to bomb a Be!-! ’ I fast post office transport •I depot. The guerrillas also i died. tj The Rev. lan Paisley, a .: fundamentalist preacher who ■leads hard-line Protestants T loyal to Britain, was to dei nland action on the Boyle! case in the British House of • : I Commons. 1! The Belfast police an-! : nouncement said the two! i soldiers were now in Eng-! ■ land. They would be brought! i before a court in Northern Ireland. I The Special Aii Service, formed during World War II to operate behind enemy lines, was introduced . into Northern Ireland in 1976. Despite its title, it i operates on the ground, out of uniform, and covertly.