UK rejects new probe into 1971 Belfast killings

Britain announced today it will not order a fact-finding probe into the 1971 killing of 10 Belfast Catholics, including a priest, by British troops during a three-day street confrontation, a decision that infuriated relatives of the dead.
The relatives have lobbied for an investigation similar to the one that explored 1972's Bloody Sunday, when troops shot dead 13 Catholic demonstrators in another city, Londonderry.
That 12-year probe concluded the soldiers killed unarmed civilians, not armed IRA members.
Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, said Britain didn't believe a probe "would provide answers which are not already in the public domain or covered by existing legal processes."

She noted Northern Ireland's attorney general already had ordered new coroner's court investigations, a three-year-old process that has yet to produce any findings.