 Judge rules promises made by UK government as part of Good Friday agreement mean trial of John Downey cannot go ahead 
 
 A man accused of murdering four soldiers in an IRA bomb attack in London's Hyde Park in 1982 has walked free from court after a judge ruled his trial should not go ahead because of British government assurances he received under the Good Friday peace agreement. The families of the bombing victims said they felt "devastatingly let down" after the prosecution collapsed. Last week, at the Old Bailey in London, Mr Justice Sweeney ruled that the need to prosecute those accused of serious crime was outweighed by "the public interest in holding officials of the state to promises they have made in full understanding of what is involved in the bargain". After a meeting on Tuesday morning with Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, the prosecution told the high court in London it would not appeal against the ruling, and reporting restrictions were lifted. The relatives of the Household Cavalry soldiers Corporal-Major Roy Bright, Lieutenant Dennis Daly, Trooper Simon Tipper and Lance-Corporal Geoffrey Young said they "never ceased in their desire to see that justice be done". Mr Downey had travelled to the UK on four previous occasions since 2010. The Crown Prosecution Service had argued that the assurance was given in error - but the judge said it amounted to a "catastrophic failure" that misled the defendant. The statement read: "This news has left us all feeling devastatingly let down, even more so when the monumental blunder behind this judgement lies at the feet of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The end result, it said, was that the "full chain of those terrible events" would never be put in the public domain for justice to be seen to be done. They added: "With no sensible explanation from the PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland], this must surely now raise the question of whether there have been other errors in the issuing of other such letters. The bomb that Mr Downey was accused of planting was the first of two that day in London and he was linked to the attack by fingerprints found on a parking ticket bought for the car used to transport the bomb. Two hours later, a second bomb exploded under a bandstand two miles away in Regent's Park, killing seven soldiers with the Royal Green Jackets band.
– UK prosecutors think they know who set off the bomb that killed four British soldiers and seven horses in London's Hyde Park in 1982, but a judge today threw out the case against 62-year-old John Downey, reports the BBC. The wrench was that Downey was one of about 190 IRA suspects who get a letter from the British government in 2007 assuring them that they were no longer wanted by the law, reports the Guardian. It was part of the Good Friday peace agreement. The Police Service of Northern Ireland now acknowledges that Downey never should have received such a letter because he had an outstanding warrant at the time, reports the Belfast Telegraph. "I wish to apologize to the families of the victims and survivors of the Hyde Park atrocity," says the PSNI's chief constable. "I deeply regret these failings which should not have happened." The families, meanwhile, criticized the "monumental blunder" and said their "torment will be ongoing."