No shoot-to-kill missions against IRA, says former SAS officer

The families of the three men have insisted it was a "shoot-to-kill operation" and they could have been arrested.

Ignatius Harte, a brother of two of the men, previously told the BBC that the Army had "prior knowledge of the men being armed, they had access to the weapons so therefore they could have been arrested at any time and charged".

"They lured them into an ambush and shot them dead without any warning," he added.

But when asked if it was a "shoot-to-kill mission", George Simm said "definitely no".

"When someone is shooting at you with a Kalashnikov at close range" and bullets are travelling at "600m a second it is not possible to think rationally in a nanosecond".

"We are ready for every operation, so if they shoot or they're intending to shoot us, then we'll go at it," he said.

"But we can also do the other one which is the aim. The police want to get hold of these guys and interrogate them."

But Andrée Murphy from Relatives for Justice said legacy needs to be "respectful and sensitive" of the experiences of "survivors of the most horrendous of traumas" instead of prioritising the "feelings of people who pulled the triggers at the time".

Murphy said British soldiers "were never compelled to be asked questions at the time" and that when investigations were ordered, they were often flawed.

"That is why families now are going back to asking the same questions they asked in the aftermath of the killings," she added.

Murphy argued there was often "ample opportunity" to intervene before operations reached the point of firefights.

This was the case in Clonoe, she said, "where the inquest talked about 'ample opportunity for arrest'. Those things are really important".

Murphy said many soldiers who killed during the Troubles have never been investigated and should "for the first time" be "asked questions… in a human rights-compliant fashion".