Call for healing ceremony for pardoned ‘deserters’

The family and supporters of Irish servicemen recently pardoned for deserting the Irish army to fight with Britain have called for a healing State ceremony to bring closure to their years of persecution.

The 4,500 solders branded deserters were told in June by Justice Minister Alan Shatter that they were to be pardoned.

In a new BBC radio documentary, Pardon for the Disowned Soldiers, the daughter of 92-year-old Dublin solider Philip Farrington, who helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, said her father was haunted all of his life by the fear of further reprisals after he spent six months in jail in Cork for desertion.