United States Congress’ Friends of Ireland Chairman Opposes Decision by British Army to Reinstate James Fisher and Mark Wright as Scots Guards
Syracuse, NY, USA - Congressman James T. Walsh (NY-25), Chairman of the United States Congress’ Friends of Ireland, today called the decision by the British Ministry of Defense to reinstate Scots Guards James Fisher and Mark Wright after being convicted and jailed for murdering an Irish teenager "an insult to the family and friends of Peter McBride and to the all the people of Northern Ireland."
In 1992, Scots Guardsmen Fisher and Wright shot Peter McBride in the back, murdering the unarmed young man after previously stopping, questioning, and searching him. The soldiers served less than six years of life sentences for murder and were released from prison in 1998. At the time, the two soldiers were only the third and fourth soldiers ever convicted of murdering a civilian while on duty in Ireland.
"The decision of the British Army late last week to reinstate two convicted murderers is a travesty," said Walsh. "Soldiers are protectors, representatives of laws and government. These two on-duty Guardsmen shot and killed an unarmed child as he fled. Though convicted, their release and lack of appropriate punishment was already a slap to the McBride Family and to all of Northern Ireland. The news of their reinstatement in the British Army is a deplorable outrage. In my view, the government officials who authorized their reinstatement are just as culpable as these two murderers."
Walsh urged British government officials and the Army Board to reverse their decision and dismiss the soldiers. According to Walsh, failure to do so would undermine the already-fragile confidence in the rule of law and contravene the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.
Peter McBride, an eighteen year-old from north Belfast in Northern Ireland, was a two-year alumnus of Central New York’s Project Children program which brings dozens of Protestant and Catholic Irish children to Upstate New York each summer. After his murder, the 1993 Syracuse St. Patrick’s Parade was dedicated in his memory.