The UK government successfully lobbied the BBC to axe a report revealing the British Army killed an unarmed child in Derry during the Troubles in 1972, newly released documents reveal.

The UK government successfully lobbied the BBC to axe a report revealing the British Army killed an unarmed child in Derry during the Troubles in 1972, newly released documents reveal.

A week after 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty was shot dead, the Ministry of Defence falsely claimed he had been killed from a distance of 25 metres by a soldier who believed the child was armed.

But a memo sent days after the 31 July incident showed senior personnel knew Hegarty had in fact been killed by a “general purpose machine gun” at point-blank range.

Hegarty’s killer was an 18-year-old known only as ‘Soldier B’, who shot him during Operation Motorman, a British Army push to retake “no-go areas” controlled by residents and Irish republican paramilitaries.

Soldier B reportedly told an October 1973 inquest: “I cocked the weapon and when the youths were about 25 metres away I aimed at the leading man and fired a quick burst” of bullets.

The declassified documents, obtained by the Pat Finucane Centre, show that BBC Panorama correspondent Alan Hart spoke to witnesses of the shooting who said Hegarty and two cousins who were with him were unarmed and posed no threat.

Hart then approached the British Army in Derry for comment. His request reached the office of prime minister Edward Heath, whose press secretary Donald Maitland instructed a senior official at the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) to “persuade Panorama not to include this tragic incident in the projected programme”.

The pressure worked, and the BBC omitted the segment when the programme aired on 7 August 1972.

“After a major effort, the NIO managed to get the item removed from Monday’s programme,” NIO spokesperson RJ Seaman told the Ministry of Defence the following day.

Hegarty’s sister, Margaret Brady, told the Irish News last week: “We could have been spared decades of hurt and heartbreak if they had admitted what they knew, that Daniel was innocent, unarmed and shot at close range.”

Brady has called on the BBC to locate unaired footage of interviews with her parents in the aftermath of the killing. The corporation told Derry Journal it would “make every effort to locate the footage… although at this point we cannot say if it still exists.”

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