The Great Betrayal film by the organization Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans (JNIV), to be released in a few months, tells the story of ex-servicemen in aftermath of the Good Friday agreement, where letters of assurance were sent to more than 200 Irish Republican Army (IRA) suspects, while members of UK security forces were "left exposed to prosecution."

"How can it be right for one side in a peace process to be given protection while the other is not?" is one of the questions posed in the trailer.

With 22,000 members all over Britain, Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans has been established to fight against what its members call a "one-sided witch hunt against security forces who served in Northern Ireland as part of the Operation Banner. The deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland started on August 14, 1969 and lasted for 38 years, becoming the longest campaign in British military history.

Co-founder of the group and former soldier Alan Barry told Sputnik that while the role of the Irish Republicans in the conflict is continually portrayed in a positive light by British mainstream media, while British forces veterans are left to scrape for representation.

Mr. Barry has been invited to take part in BBC's Sunday Morning Live and Spotlight programs but, according to Mr. Barry, compared to other speakers, he was given less airtime.

The matter of British Army veterans facing prosecution has also been covered in online reports by the BBC.

Other mainstream media giants, such as Sky News and ITV, have never expressed interest to JNIV in covering the issue on TV, he added.

In early February, during a sit-down interview for BBC One's The Andrew Marr show, former leader of the Irish republican political party Sinn Fein Gerry Adams spoke about his connection with the IRA.

Adams explained why he had not joined the IRA, having repeatedly denied he was a member — "because I was active in Sinn Fein when the IRA was non-existent in the 1960s."

"My position has been consistent that I was not a member of the IRA but I've never distanced myself from the IRA. I did defend the IRA but I also was very critical of the IRA. I don't condone everything that the IRA did."

The prominent Irish leader, who for decades defended republican violence but was instrumental in its cessation, reflected on the "awfulness and horror of war."

"I would wish that no one had been killed or injured in the course of the conflict."

In his turn, Mr. Barry condemns IRA violence, pointing to the "hypocrisy of Sinn Fein and the Republican movement where they continuously accuse us of state-sponsored war and murder of innocent civilians."

JNIV are looking to release the documentary on Youtube, Netflix, Amazon and will also bid for TV airspace.

"It's a sad state of affairs — when we have to tell our story ourselves, when our own media are not willing to do it," Mr. Barry told Sputnik.

The deadly conflict between the pro-Irish republicans and the pro-British loyalists — known as the Troubles — cost over 3,500 lives, mostly civilian, between 1969 and 1998.

In 1969 the British army were called in to establish control of the unrest in Northern Ireland, as the local police could not contain the trouble on the streets of Belfast and Derry (Londonderry being its British name).

Initially, many Catholics welcomed the British Army's deployment, with strong hopes for ceasing violence directed at Catholic neighborhoods by Protestant paramilitaries and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). However, the British military intervention was also perceived as effective martial law, imposed by a foreign imperial army and designed to prop up the collapsing government in Stormont, Northern Ireland.

The IRA began calling for all-out war against British soldiers, although mainstream IRA leaders rejected the strategy.

The situation worsened following the events of January 30, 1972 — now known as the Bloody Sunday — when thirteen people were killed by members of the Parachute Regiment of the British Army in Derry's Bogside, while the 14th victim of the shootings died in hospital four months later.

According to former soldier Alan Barry, the other side of the story is never the focus of media attention.

"There were over 700 British soldiers murdered in Northern Ireland — that's more than Iraq and Afghanistan put together. In the same year as the Bloody Sunday, over 170 servicemen were killed that year. We never hear about the 170 British soldiers. All we seem to hear from the BBC is content about those killed on Bloody Sunday. We never hear that the IRA were firing at British soldiers from behind the crowd. All we hear about is British soldiers shooting innocent civilians."

The conflict was ended in 1998, when the Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, was reached in multi-party negotiations and signed on 10 April.

During the Troubles, the Republicans accused British Army soldiers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) of operating a "shoot-to-kill" policy, where suspected criminals of Irish identity were alleged to have been killed on purpose without any attempt of arrest.

In 1992, families of IRA volunteers called on the British government to "come clean on Shoot-to-Kill" in the report titled Ambush, Assassination & Impunity.

The report was put together with the assistance of the Belfast-based organization Relatives for Justice (RFJ) that was founded in April 1991 by a number of bereaved families affected by the conflict.

"We, the families of Peter Clancy, Sean O'Farrell, Patrick Vincent, and my own brother Barry O'Donnell, killed in a pre-planned, pre-meditated SAS shoot-to-kill ambush on February 16th 1992 at Clonoe, County Tyrone, this morning publish for the first time details of the circumstances surrounding these killings in this new report," the authors said.

One of the co-founders and CEO of RFJ, Mark Thompson, said in an interview published by The International Center for Transitional Justice:

Photo: Sputnik, Nikolai Gorshkov

Another family member of a man killed during the Troubles, Tarlac Connolly, spoke in an interview about his cousin Peter Ryan, an IRA man ambushed and killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) of the British Army in 1991.

"Our concern is not that it was a shoot-to-kill. They were involved in a war situation and that was the consequences of war. Soldiers do what soldiers do. Our concern is that our relatives were dragged off the road wounded after this incident, and burned and that breaks the Geneva Convention and is a war crime. We want the person who took that decision to face a war crimes tribunal in The Hague," Mr. Connolly said.

The legacy of the violent conflict continues to influence not only the lives of families who lost their loves ones but also the British servicemen, sent to Northern Ireland to uphold peace between the warring sections.

British Army veteran Kenny Knott, who served Northern Ireland in 1986 for four years as part of the Coldstream Guard, 2nd Battalion, spoke to Sputnik about his cause as member of the Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans group.

"The justice that we want stems back to the Good Friday agreement that Prime Minister Tony Blair has created with Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland. This peace agreement gave immunity and letters of comfort to the IRA terrorists. They were released from jail — convicted murderers, responsible for killing men, women and children during their terrorist campaign."

Former solider Kenny Knott served in South Armagh, which was under the nickname "Bandit Country."

"There were a lot of IRA snipers, shooting at British soldiers on patrol from a distance and then disappearing to the night. It was their tactics. This is what we had to contend with, as well as the bombs, the improvised explosive devices they created. We also had to keep the peace with riots, domestic violence taking place. We tried to keep two factions in Northern Ireland apart — the Protestant and the Catholic community," he told Sputnik.

Mr. Knott is calling for fair treatment of the veterans who were not included in the "one-sided" Good Friday agreement and are now "victims of political injustice."

Ever since the Good Friday agreement, the British government has tried very hard to make sure it works in Northern Ireland to sustain peace and stability in the region, Professor of Political History at Queen's University in Belfast, Graham Walker, told Sputnik.

"It has become clear that a number of compromised and concessions has been made around that agreement in terms of getting prisoners out of jail, giving them a pardon."

Under the 1998 peace deal drawn by then British PM Tony Blair and the Irish Republicans, the On the Runs (OTRs) scheme, was launched a year later when over 200 paramilitary suspects were informed they were no longer wanted by prosecutors. The scheme did not apply to those who had not been charged or who had been convicted but escaped.

The existence of the letters only emerged in 2014 following the collapse of the trial of John Downey, who was charged with murdering four soldiers in the Hyde Park bombing. Downey was a suspect in the 1982 IRA bombing in Hyde Park, which left four soldiers dead after a nail bomb tore through the ranks of the Household Cavalry on a Changing of the Guard procession. In May 2013 Downey was arrested as he entered the UK and charged with the murders but the prosecution collapsed after it emerged he had been sent a comfort letter.

The comfort letters scheme has come under sharp criticism, with the First Minister of Northern Ireland Peter Robinson calling it a 'murky deal' in 2014.

Tony Blair insisted the policy was "not an amnesty" and was "not secret" when he was questioned by a House of Commons committee in 2015 on his role in sending letters to scores of fugitive IRA members.

No comfort letters have been issued to members of the British Army, who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, leaving them exposed.

The door "they knocked on" belonged to Dennis Hutchings.

A British Army veteran, 76-year Dennis Hutchings has been charged with attempted murder of IRA suspect John Pat Cunningham, 27, who died in a fatal shooting more than 40 years ago.

Mr Cunningham was shot in the back as he ran away from a British Army patrol near Benburb, Co Armagh at the height of the Troubles in 1974.

Hutchings is to stand trial, despite having been previously assured in the past he would not be dragged before the courts. Following the investigation by the Historical Enquiries Team in 2011, he was told then, that no further action would be taken. Despite this, in 2015 the Legacy Investigation Branch reopened his case.

Alan Barry believes the case against Hutchings is politically motivated and driven by Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. He is confident there is no evidence to suggest Dennis is guilty. Hutchings' case was reopened by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) following a re-examination of what was called new evidence.

According to Mr. Barry, the file of new evidence was analyzed by a number of police experts outside the investigation, who wished to remain anonymous. They pulled the case by the PSNI apart, pointing to numerous breaches of police procedure during Hutchings' arrest on April 21, 2015.

"It is a witch hunt, a persecution of a 76-year old great grandfather who has been given 2 years to live. He has got kidney failure," Mr. Barry told Sputnik.

The prosecution led by judge Seamus Treacy announced Mr. Hutchings — who was in charge of the Army patrol that day — fired three shots, and that he failed to give a correct warning to Mr. Cunningham.

Mr. Justice Treacy made a decision to commit Hutchings to trial. According to Mr. Barry he was one of the two judges who - when appointed to the bar, as the Queen's council — refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the Queen because he said it was against his Republican principles.

"How can this judge be deemed impartial? It was decided that Dennis should face a judge-only trial. How can that be right? He might as well be in front of a kangaroo court," Mr. Barry told Sputnik.

British army veteran Kenny Knott has also voiced his concern over the fairness of a judge-only trial and the precedent the case creates for other servicemen.

Hutchings' last hearing took place on December 15, 2017, when no pleas entered against charges. Hutchings was granted continuing bail to a date to be fixed, according to a statement by the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service sent to Sputnik.

Following the 1998 peace deal struck in Northern Ireland, the British government has put an emphasis on preserving stability in the region.

In 2010, the then prime minister, David Cameron, has told the House of Commons in his speech on the Saville Inquiry by families of those killed and injured in Derry on Bloody Sunday:

"Northern Ireland has been transformed over the past twenty years…and all of us in Westminster and Stormont must continue that work of change, coming together with all the people of Northern Ireland to build a stable, peaceful, prosperous and shared future."

A year later Cameron — while addressing the Stormont Assembly in Northern Ireland — stressed he wanted "to see a peaceful, stable and prosperous Northern Ireland for everybody."

Professor Graham Walker believes the UK government do not wishing anything to upset the balance struck in 1998.

Among other issues threatening the fragile peace in Belfast are the legacy of the conflict, failure to restore a power-sharing government, disagreement over the Irish Language Act championed by Sinn Fein and questions over the nature of the DUP-Tory coalition.

However, to veterans like Alan Barry, the political antagonism between the major Northern Ireland parties and their grueling relationship with the current leadership in Westminster are just another reminder of older issues that never got resolved.