The only British soldier charged over the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland, one of the worst atrocities during the UK region's decades-long conflict, is to stand trial for murder, a judge announced Thursday.
The ex-paratrooper, identified only as "Soldier F", is charged with murdering two civilians and the attempted murder of five others during the crackdown on a civil rights protest in Londonderry -- also known as Derry -- more than half a century ago.
Bloody Sunday helped galvanise support for the Provisional IRA and became synonymous with the worst violence in the conflict known as the "Troubles," which ended with peace accords in 1998.
The defendant will go on trial in the capital Belfast at a date not yet fixed, district judge Ted Magill said.
Mickey McKinney, brother of one of the two murdered civilians, told the BBC the trial should start "as soon as possible" as the killings happened almost 52 years ago.
"Witnesses are dying and becoming unavailable," he said, urging a "swift and successful conclusion" to the trial.
Northern Irish prosecutors first recommended Soldier F stand trial in 2019 for the same crimes, but dropped the case after the collapse of the trial of several other ex-soldiers, before reopening it last year.
The symbolic case has proved deeply divisive in the UK-run province where the decades of sectarian violence that began in the 1960s continue to cast a long shadow.
British troops opened fire on a civil rights demonstration in the majority Catholic Bogside area of Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city, on January 30, 1972, killing 13 people.
A 14th victim later died of his wounds.
A 12-year public inquiry -- the largest investigation in UK legal history -- concluded in 2010 that British paratroopers lost control and none of the casualties posed a threat of causing death or serious injury.
The probe prompted then-prime minister David Cameron to issue a formal state apology for the killings, calling them "unjustified and unjustifiable".
Northern Irish police then began a murder investigation into Bloody Sunday and finally submitted their files to prosecutors in 2016.