Debate contribution: Soldier F: Not Guilty Verdict

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on 3 November 2025.

MLA: Mr Paul Frew
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 3 November 2025
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Matters of the Day
Heading: Soldier F: Not Guilty Verdict
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5212720

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise with a heart full of sensitivity and compassion for all the innocent victims of the Troubles, who never came home and left an empty chair in their households. It is with that compassion and sensitivity that I will speak today. You could ask whether the soldiers were even supposed to be there on the day. That was a decision that was made by the Government of the day and the command of the army on the day. We are talking about putting an individual on trial, not a regiment or the British Army. We are talking about an individual, who, at a very young age and at the rank of lance corporal, was in charge of four soldiers who were part of a section of eight. He would have been trained for wartime conflict, not the restoration of civil peace. On the streets of Northern Ireland at that time, fires were burning, and no one knew what the future held. The British Army served in that context in Northern Ireland, and we should not forget or shy away from that. The soldiers who served in Northern Ireland came from all over the British Isles and included those from the Royal Irish Rangers and the Ulster Defence Regiment, later the Royal Irish Regiment, who lived here and served their communities with distinction. Each one of them went out every day to protect all of us from terrorist fire, and all we hear is hypocrisy from the parties opposite, which have, no doubt, used the families of Bloody Sunday over the decades to suit their political goals and objectives and to try to rewrite history. We do not hear the facts about the innocent victims of the Teebane, Enniskillen, Omagh, Bloody Friday, Kingsmills and Regent's Park attacks and the Birmingham bombings. Why are the parties opposite not campaigning for justice for those families?
Why do they not hand over the information that they know? Martin McGuinness had an opportunity to do so, but because of the IRA's code of silence, he refused to give innocent victims the truth about the tragedies and the murder of their loved ones. That is hypocritical nonsense from the parties opposite, and we should call it out when it happens.

379 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Qualifying Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism

Jev’s structured answers met every documented threshold for a qualifying culture-war activity.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.75 (qualifying needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not qualifying).
Criteria met: Identity framing (0.69).
The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.71).
Subject area: Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism.
All qualifying thresholds were met.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.69	Yes
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.26	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.08	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.52	No
Controversy escalation	0.39	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.13	No
Overall judgement	0.75	Above qualifying threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.21
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.08
Adopts it (chosen)	0.71

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.93
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.05
No identity-related subject	0.01
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:46 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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