Article - BBC censored film on British army killing child

The very highest levels of the British government secretly exerted pressure on the BBC to censor a film about the army killing an unarmed child in 1972. Official documents, recently discovered by the Pat Finucane Centre, also show the British Army was aware, shortly after the killing in Derry, that the boy had been killed at “point blank” range by an immensely powerful machine-gun. However the Ministry of Defence falsely informed an inquest into his death that he was shot from 25 meters away by a soldier who thought the boy was armed. The case revolves around the shooting dead of 15-year-old Danny Hegarty during “Operation Motorman” in the early hours of 31 July 1972, as the British Army moved in to clear barricades and retake “no go” areas in the city that had previously been under IRA control. A BBC Panorama reporter, Alan Hart (now deceased), had filmed people in Derry questioning the British Army’s account of how Hegarty was shot twice in the head and how his cousin accompanying him, Christopher, was wounded (another cousin, Thomas, was unscathed).