The family of murdered Belfast teenager Peter McBride have criticised remarks made by broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy on BBC television's Breakfast News yesterday.
Mr Kennedy had called for compensation to be paid to the two Scots Guards convicted of the murder for the six years they spent in prison. He had previously campaigned on behalf of the soldiers who were released from prison in 1998 after serving fewer than four years for the 1992 killing.
Mr McBride's mother Jean said she was "incandescent with rage" at Mr Kennedy's remarks.
"Who does this man think he is? Mark Wright and James Fisher stand convicted of Peter's murder," she said. "He may not accept that shooting an unarmed 18-year-old boy in the back is murder, the British army doesn't seem to believe it is murder, but the courts certainly did."
Mrs McBride said the remarks strengthened her determination to have the soldiers dismissed from the British army.
"This is only rubbing salt into the wound. Those who allowed them to remain must share responsibility for the kind of inaccurate, insulting rubbish that Ludovic Kennedy is coming out with."
Solicitors acting on behalf of the McBride family have asked the BBC for a record of the interview.
This was not the first controversial remark Mr Kennedy made about the McBride case. In 1998, he claimed the dead teenager was believed to be an IRA sympathiser - a fact that was immediately dismissed by the McBride family.
Following the release of the Scots Guards in 1998, Mr Kennedy said he looked forward to "shaking the hands of the two men."
