Ireland has filed a legal challenge against Britain over a new law that provides conditional amnesties to former soldiers and militants involved in decades of violence in Northern Ireland, the European Court of Human Rights announced on Friday. The law has been met with condemnation from victims' families, human-rights groups, and all major political parties in Ireland, including British unionists and Irish nationalists. It went into effect last September. The Irish government, which submitted the case on Jan. 17, argues that certain provisions of the law are not compatible with the European Convention, according to the ECHR statement.

Britain has stopped prosecutions of those involved in the Troubles period, claiming that they are unlikely to succeed and that an independent body should be set up instead. Britain argues that prosecutions linked to events up to 55 years ago are increasingly unlikely to lead to convictions and that the legislation is necessary to put an end to the conflict.

Dublin stated last month when announcing the decision to take the British government to court that it had no other recourse but to do so, as London had shut off any possibility of a political resolution. Britain has called Ireland's challenge unnecessary. The conflict in Northern Ireland resulted in the deaths of around 3,600 people during three decades of confrontation between Irish nationalist militants seeking a united Ireland, pro-British loyalist paramilitaries, and the British military. The conflict largely came to an end with a 1998 peace deal.