Families in Northern Ireland who lost loved ones during three decades of bloodshed fear a proposed amnesty for those involved in the conflict will end their hopes for justice.
Twenty-five years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement ended what was known as the Troubles, many victims feel forgotten by the attempts to reconcile between all parties.
The Troubles took the lives of more than 3,600 people at the hands of nationalist militants seeking Irish unity, the United Kingdom army or pro-British unionist militants wanting to stay in the United Kingdom.
In a short section, the Good Friday Agreement said it was essential to address the suffering of victims as a necessary element of reconciliation.
The patchwork of measures that followed has failed in that ambition, according to families of those who died.
Now the proposed legislation from the UK government to introduce an amnesty to former soldiers and individuals involved in the conflict has left those still grieving fearful that any lingering hope of finding justice or truth will be lost forever.
Andrea Brown's father, a police officer in Northern Ireland, was murdered in 1983 by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Ms Brown — from Moira, about 30km south-west of Belfast — said she and many others who lost loved ones felt forgotten by the peace process over the past 25 years.
"Every time you seem to get knocked down again and again, disregarded almost like a by-product of the Good Friday Agreement," she said.
"It's very, very difficult to live knowing that my whole life changed with one bullet and the people who did that will never be brought to justice."
Ms Brown was injured five years later in an IRA bomb that claimed the lives of six soldiers and now uses a wheelchair.
She prays that the UK government will drop its amnesty plans.
The UK argues that prosecutions linked to the events of up to 55 years ago are increasingly unlikely to lead to convictions and that the legislation currently being debated, is needed to draw a line under the conflict.
While some trials have collapsed in recent years, the first former UK soldier to be convicted of an offence since the peace deal was given a suspended sentence in February for the manslaughter of a Catholic man shot dead in 1988.
Other inquiries and court cases are proceeding.
The UK's plans would override a 2014 agreement that foresaw continued investigations.
Amnesty for Troubles will set 'dangerous precedent'
The amnesty bill is opposed by all Northern Ireland political parties, the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Irish government and victims' groups.
"It toys with what is a very delicate peace settlement here," Amnesty International Northern Ireland deputy director Grainne Teggart said.
"It will also set a very dangerous precedent internationally."
Alan McBride's wife Sharon and his father-in-law were among nine civilians killed by an IRA bomb in a fish shop on Belfast's Shankill Road five years before the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
Mr McBride, a project manager for a cross-community trauma centre that assists those affected by the Troubles, said "reconciliation is what has been badly lacking" in the last 25 years.
"Some people want truth, some people want justice, some just want acknowledgement, some financial restitution and some want a memorial. What we need is something that can allow all these things to happen in society," he said.
Looking at old pictures of his wife and young daughter Zoe, now around the same age Sharon was when she was killed, Mr McBride recalls how the debris-strewn street was "just like a scene from hell".
Eugene Reavey still tears up thinking about the loss of his brothers – John Martin, Brian and Anthony.
All three were shot by a loyalist gang in their home in the small Northern Irish County Armagh village of Whitecross in 1976.
The eldest, John Martin, was shot 40 times and left "like a rag doll," his brother recalls.
In 2019 a Northern Ireland court ordered an independent investigation into alleged collusion between security services and the gang suspected of the killing.
"It absolutely changes you. You don't trust anybody after that," said Mr Reavey, now in his 70s.
Like Mr Reavey, Cathy McIlvenny fears decades of campaigning will be wasted if an amnesty is introduced.
Nobody has been held accountable for the 1987 rape and murder of her sister, Lorraine McCausland, who was last seen at a bar run by loyalist militants.
Ms Lorraine's son, Craig, was shot dead by another loyalist group 18 years later.
"I think this is what the government wants, that families will die off. My father has died but my daughter will take it up after me. We feel we owe that to each other," said McIlvenny.
Reuters/ABC
