The bloodshed took no more than two chaotic minutes. Yet the events of that January day, played out in a Belfast courtroom more than half a century later, were among the most momentous in the 30 years of violence that once gripped Northern Ireland.

There were times in the past five weeks when proceedings in Court 12 of Belfast Crown Court felt more like a harsh lesson in the history of the Troubles than a criminal trial.

For the relatives of those killed on Bloody Sunday - the notorious 1972 massacre of civilians in Londonderry - every word, every witness account of what took place on that shameful day was absorbed in stony silence.

For them, sitting in the public gallery, the events which left 13 dead and many more injured when paratroopers opened fire following a civil rights demonstration, still feel viscerally current.

Yet, in reality, the double-murder trial of the man known only as Soldier F, a former soldier in his 70s who is the only person ever charged in connection with those events 53 years ago, was a failed attempt to examine history through a modern lens.

The 'not guilty' verdict delivered by Judge Patrick Lynch KC made this clear: '53-year-old statements cannot be cross-examined,' as he put it. The evidence fell 'well short' of what was required to convict.

On the day of the shootings, Britain was still in the early days of decimalisation, having recently switched from pounds, shillings and pence.

Sir Edward Heath was Prime Minister. Brian Clough's Derby County were flying high in football's League Division One. Marlon Brando's performance in The Godfather, released later that year, would be the talk of the summer.

The country was a very different place, and nowhere was this more apparent than on the streets of Belfast in 1972.

What became known, euphemistically as the Troubles – those on the ground say they were fighting a war – had already been bubbling for four years.

Major unrest broke out in the late 1960s when the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland sought equal rights in housing and employment. Discrimination was rife, even at the polling booth.

Voting was restricted to homeowners, the majority of whom were Protestant. Wealthy business owners and university graduates had extra votes.

There were demands for social change across Western Europe at the time. And by 1969, the demonstrations in Northern Ireland were turning violent.

Catholic families were being burnt out of their homes by the Protestant mob, and with the Royal Ulster Constabulary unable to cope, the British Army was deployed to the streets of Belfast and Londonderry, two divided cities.

Meanwhile, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was recruiting, determined to end British rule in the province and bring about a united Ireland.

At first the British soldiers had been welcomed with tea and cake by citizens who hoped their presence meant peace. Bloody Sunday would change all that.

The fatal sequence of events began just before 3pm on Sunday, January 30. Around 15,000 people gathered in Londonderry to protest against internment without trial which had been approved the previous year by the Westminster government.

It was a policy that saw hundreds IRA suspects arrested by armed soldiers, even if the intelligence they were acting upon was flawed.

Troops from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, had been sent to Londonderry to maintain order.

The regiment was notorious, a no-nonsense brigade to be deployed when the going got tough. Troops from the same battalion had already shot dead nine civilians in Ballymurphy, west Belfast, the previous year. There had been a tenth death but it was not formally attributed to the Army.

In 2021 a coroner ruled that those killed at Ballymurphy were 'entirely innocent'. Relatives of those who lost their lives that day attended Soldier F's trial in support of the Bloody Sunday families.

As the Londonderry march proceeded, some demonstrators threw rocks at the soldiers. Troops began firing teargas and rubber bullets in return.

But when paratroopers moved into the Bogside to make arrests, something was 'different', as survivor Joe Mahon would tell Belfast Crown Court 53 years later.

'This was live shots,' he said.

Mr Mahon, who was just 16 at the time but gave evidence as a portly, red-faced man of 70, said he heard shouts of 'the Paras [Parachute Regiment] are coming!' before he himself was shot.

'I found myself on the ground,' he said. 'I thought it was a rubber bullet because when you see someone getting shot on the TV they are rolling about in pain and all this.'

He heard a voice beside him say, 'I've been hit, son. I've been hit.'

That man turned out to be William McKinney. He was one of the two men allegedly murdered by Soldier F, who also faced five charges of attempted murder.

Mr Mahon said that he saw a soldier firing 'from his hip' and aiming it 'side to side' in a courtyard called Glenfada Park North, where demonstrators had fled, thinking it was a 'safe area'.

Mr Mahon also claimed that he saw a soldier firing two shots into a man lying prone and, allegedly, heard him say to a comrade: 'I have got another one.'

Michael Quinn was 17 when he was shot in the face. According to the prosecution, he was another victim of Soldier F who, aside from the two counts of murder, faced five charges of attempted murder.

Mr Quinn had been 'apprehensive' about the march that day as he knew paratroopers were due to attend. He said that, as the group he was in started to run away from the soldiers, they heard the 'hard crack' of an Army rifle.

'Over the previous six months we had grown accustomed to hearing gunfire and being able to distinguish between an Army SLR rifle and something the IRA might have been firing,' he said.

As he ran across the courtyard he was hit.

'[The bullet] grazed my shoulder, the jacket I was wearing, and then went through my face and exited through my nose,' he said. 'It hit me close to my ear. It broke the cheek bone, it shattered the cheekbone.

'For some reason I kind of slowed down and I could actually see the flesh and blood breaking away from my face.'

The detail was harrowing, particularly by the standards of courtroom testimony,

Yet the problem with the evidence presented by the Mr Mahon and Mr Quinn - difficulty with all the evidence in the case - is that there was nothing to prove that Soldier F was the man who shot them.

Neither was there anything to prove that F shot William McKinney or the the other victims named on the charge sheet, James Wray, Patrick O'Donnell and Joseph Friel.

The prosecution case solely relied on statements made by two of Soldier F's comrades, known as Soldiers G and H, in the aftermath of the shootings.

They claim they saw F fire in the area in question. However, as Soldier G has since died and H said he would exercise his right to avoid self-incrimination if summoned, it meant their evidence could not be properly tested in court.

It was not difficult to see why Soldier H elected to stay away. Judge Lynch concluded that, if the prosecution case were to be accepted, these two crucial witnesses were 'just as guilty of murder' as F. They, too, had admitted firing their weapons in the area.

Yet, despite what seemed tenuous evidence, the case continued.

Soldier F was only charged in 2019, almost a decade after the 12-year-long Saville inquiry – the most expensive public inquiry in British legal history – concluded that those killed were innocent and unarmed, despite initial claims to the contrary.

A murder investigation was launched and 18 soldiers were reported to the Northern Ireland prosecutor. Only one was charged.

The 2010 Saville report found that Soldier F fired 13 shots on the day in question after he said he saw a crowd of 'rioters… one of whom appeared to be carrying a rifle.'

In a statement shortly after the shootings, F had said he saw one man with 'some form of bomb. He raised his arm as if to throw the bomb. I fired two aimed shots at the man. The first I saw strike him in the shoulder and the second strike him in the stomach. The bomb did not explode.'

He admitted to the Saville Inquiry that he had killed four people but said he had been 'doing my job as a soldier'. Lord Saville concluded that none of those shot or wounded were armed.

Yet Soldier F's evidence to Saville could not be used in court because those who participated in the inquiry had been told their testimony would not be used to prosecute them in future - raising the question of why Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service thought there was enough of a case to proceed.

Then there were the statements made by Soldier F in 1972 about the shootings. These, too, were inadmissable following a ruling made by Mr Justice O'Hara in the 2021 trial of two elderly veterans known as A and C.

Accused of murdering Official IRA commander Joe McCann in 1972, the case against the former soldiers collapsed when the judge ruled their accounts in the aftermath of the shooting could not be relied upon because they had been forced to make them and did not have access to legal representation.

Soldier F declined to give evidence in court – he was hidden behind a curtain throughout to protect his anonymity – and prosecutor Louis Mably KC said the trial would not be 'another inquiry' into the events of that day.

Veterans who served in Northern Ireland are angered by what they see as a disparity in targeting soldiers while IRA atrocities remain unsolved.

Take the case of IRA man John Downey, suspected of involvement in the 1982 Hyde Park bombing in which four soldiers died.

In 2014, his Old Bailey criminal trial collapsed when he produced a so-called 'comfort letter' issued to suspected terrorists in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement saying they would not be prosecuted if they returned to Northern Ireland. At least 180 people were given such letters.

Or the IRA bombings in Belfast on 'Bloody Friday' in July 1972, in which nine people including five civilians and two soldiers were killed after a large number of car bombs exploded. No-one has been convicted.

1972 was the bloodiest year of the entire Troubles, claiming 480 lives including 170 British soldiers. No one has been held to account for the deaths of those soldiers.

What of Soldier F now?

Given the anonymity that was bestowed upon him shortly after the shootings, little is known about his life other than that he remained in the Parachute Regiment for some time, rising to become a warrant officer.

Today, he is free to return to anonymity and attempt to live out the remaining years of his life in peace.