1 Wednesday, 10th May 2000
2 (9.30 am)
3 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, Mr Clarke.
4 MR CLARKE: Could we have on the screen
5 report number 2, soldier N, page 2. This section of
6 the report describes an apparent discrepancy between
7 Lieutenant N's first statement to the Royal Military
8 Police and his other accounts. The discrepancy lies as
9 follows, it relates to the order of the rounds which he
10 fired, on his evidence, over the heads of the crowd in
11 Chamberlain Street. His first statement to the RMP
12 says this:
13 "One shot I fired high into the east wall of
14 number 14", that is the house on the western side of
15 Chamberlain Street:
16 "Two shots I fired high into the north wall
17 of number 13 Chamberlain Street", that is the
18 eastern-most side, so one to the west, two to the east.
19 In the other account the sequence is reversed
20 in that it is two to the east and then one to the west,
21 see his third RMP statement:
22 "I fired one round into the north wall of
23 number 13 Chamberlain Street, recocked my weapon and
24 immediately had cause to fire again, one, 7.62 again
25 into the north wall of number 13" that is two shots to
1 the east:
2 "After a short pause I fired one, 7.62
3 millimetre round into the east wall of number 14", so
4 that amounts to two shots to the east and one shot to
5 the western-most house instead of the other way round
6 in the first RMP statement.
7 May we then have EP 2.4. N is probably the
8 soldier depicted as either firing or about to fire in
9 this photograph, EP 2.4, which was taken by Mr Morris
10 of the Daily Mail, he is the person who appears at the
11 north corner of Eden Place and the wasteground.
12 Pig number 1 can be seen in the far corner of
13 the photograph just above the battered Bedford van and
14 Pig number 2 can be seen in the middle distance.
15 Mr Morris, who took this photograph said that he saw
16 the soldier on the left of the photograph fire two
17 shots towards Harvey Street, which is the continuation
18 of, as it were, Eden Place across Chamberlain Street
19 and then up Harvey Street. Mr Morris said that he saw
20 the soldier fire two shots from a crouching position.
21 Private Zero 19 identifies Lieutenant N as
22 being the soldier on the left of the photograph and
23 identifies himself as being the soldier on the south
24 side of Eden Place. One can see from this photograph
25 that there is -- one can see at least two other
1 soldiers in the immediate vicinity; one is a man with a
2 radio who is accosting the civilian who appears just to
3 the left of the van and the other is a soldier running
4 in a southerly direction, past the man who appears to
5 be walking in a northerly direction with a remarkable
6 lack of concern.
7 If we can go back to report number 2, soldier
8 N page 76 page 6, the issue that is here being
9 considered is whether or not Lieutenant N heard any
10 firing other than baton rounds and his own live rounds
11 before he reached his Platoon sergeant's APC and in his
12 statement for the purpose of the Widgery Tribunal, his
13 SA statement, he said:
14 "During the period I was occupied around
15 Eden Place. I was aware of firing, but none of it
16 affected me directly."
17 In his oral testimony he was asked this:
18 "You yourself had fired two shots up by
19 Chamberlain Street and one more at the man you thought
20 was about to throw the bomb, had you heard any other
21 shots?
22 Answer: No, I had not."
23 LORD SAVILLE: I suppose that might not be a
24 discrepancy on the grounds that the oral testimony says
25 "had you heard any other shots" that is to say had you
1 heard any other shots before, at the time that you
2 fired the two shots up Chamberlain Street, whereas the
3 SA statement might well refer to a somewhat later
4 period.
5 MR CLARKE: Yes, that is right, that may be
6 so.
7 Could we then have report number three,
8 soldier N, page 207, appendix 1, page 207. This sets
9 out some corroborative evidence in relation to
10 Lieutenant N. If we have the bottom half of the page,
11 Private 019 was the soldier with the baton gun who
12 Lieutenant N said was with him when he fired his
13 warning shots and he said in -- that is to say Private
14 019 said in his RMP statement:
15 "On 30th January 1972, about 1600 hours,
16 I was positioned at the corner of
17 Eden Place/Harvey Street observing a group of rioters
18 in that area ... opposite me on the other side of
19 Eden Place was N of 1 Para who was observing in the
20 same direction as myself ... the crowd started to
21 advance on my position throwing bottles and bricks at
22 both myself and N. At this point we were the only two
23 persons at the junction and so N fired two 7.62
24 millimetre rounds into a brick wall above the rioters'
25 heads in an attempt to stop them advancing. This had
1 complete effect and the crowds dispersed up
2 Chamberlain Street in a northerly and southerly
3 direction."
4 That is what is in his statement and
5 Mr Grierson has written what follows:
6 "Private 019's account is corroborative of
7 Lieutenant N's insofar as he said; (1) that the crowd
8 was advancing on them throwing missiles; (2) that
9 Lieutenant N and he were alone at that stage and; (3)
10 that Lieutenant N fired warning shots above the heads
11 of the crowd. But there are also inconsistencies
12 between the two accounts.
13 Firstly Private 019 said that Lieutenant N's
14 warning shots had complete effect and caused the crowd
15 to disperse into Chamberlain Street. Lieutenant N on
16 the other hand said that the first two shots he fired
17 only caused the crowd to go back for a moment.
18 Private 019 said that Lieutenant N fired two
19 rounds over the heads of the crowd. Lieutenant N said
20 that he fired a total of three warning shots."
21 May we now look also at bundle B, page 1492
22 where we will see the RMP statement of 019 and at the
23 second half of the document, if we may have that, about
24 four lines down is the sentence where he says:
25 "Opposite me on the other side at Eden Place
1 was N 1 Para who was observing in the same direction as
2 myself. Suddenly I heard three to five shots being
3 fired. These shots were of high velocity and were
4 fired from the direction of block 2 of the Rossville
5 flats. I could not see the gunman. As I was trying to
6 hold back the rioters which were 150 in number, and
7 were of mixed sex.
8 "The crowd started to advance on my position
9 throwing bottles and bricks and at both myself and N."
10 Then he goes on to describe how N fired two 7.62
11 millimetre rounds into a brick wall.
12 Another important witness is Mr Gilles
13 Peress, he was and is a French photographer. His
14 evidence to Lord Widgery was that after taking
15 a photograph of an APC, he went down Chamberlain Street
16 to the corner of Eden Place and saw a soldier -- he is
17 coming, as it were, from the other direction -- at the
18 corner of the buildings at Eden Place and the
19 wasteground. As he turned the corner, that is he,
20 Mr Peress, and saw the soldier, he said to the soldier
21 'press' and showed him the three cameras which he was
22 wearing and then walked slowly across Eden Place.
23 I then take it up, if I may, at Widgery
24 transcript, Day 6, page 63, where he says, the second
25 half of the page, please at D:
1 "Question: Did you speak to him?
2 Answer: Yes. Turning the corner I turned
3 towards him and said to him 'press' showing the cameras
4 at this level," he must have indicated the level of the
5 cameras "and then I walked slowly across Eden Place.
6 Approximately about two-thirds of the street, as I was
7 going to put my feet on the footpath, I heard a shot -
8 he shot at me.
9 Question: You saw a shot fired or did you
10 merely hear the sound of the rifle?
11 Answer: I saw the bullet go into the upper
12 part of the window just in Chamberlain Street, the
13 second house on the corner of Eden Place.
14 Lord Widgery: Where was the soldier when he
15 fired? The witness goes down Chamberlain Street and
16 gets to the corner of Eden Place and then there is a
17 soldier there and (to the witness) Mr Peress, you saw
18 the soldier, you show your cameras and then you cross
19 the street: which way?
20 Mr Preston: Did you go in the open ground?
21 Answer: No. He was just on the corner of
22 Eden Place and the open ground. There is a wrecked car
23 there. I was crossing this way.
24 Lord Widgery: You were going down
25 Chamberlain Street?
1 Answer: Yes. I turned towards him and said
2 'press', showed him my cameras and I crossed slowly
3 about here. Then I heard a shot. He was kneeling with
4 the gun at the hip. I heard a shot and saw a bullet
5 going in the upper part of the window of this house.
6 Question: I am not sure how you justify that
7 soldier shot at you. Can you say he shot at you and
8 not somebody else?
9 Answer: Because I was the only one, and
10 where I was, and where he was, and where the bullet
11 is. I see no other target. I do not say he shot to
12 kill me, but he took a very fair chance to frighten
13 me.
14 Mr Preston: How far from you was he when you
15 heard that shot?
16 Answer: 15 yards.
17 Question: And you saw no other soldier there
18 from whom, in your view, the shot could have come?
19 Answer: No."
20 Then he runs down to the end of
21 Chamberlain Street. The exact spot where the shot
22 landed is not clear from the transcript of Mr Peress's
23 evidence because he was, of course, pointing to a model
24 and no record of where he was pointing to was made or
25 exists.
1 If we go, please, to Day 6, page 69, at D, he
2 was asked this question:
3 "Question: Did you go to examine it
4 afterwards?" That is the spot where the bullet landed:
5 "Answer: Yes. Journalists went there
6 kneeling on the place where it was; I stood up where it
7 was and we made -- the transcriber has put "the
8 collection with the bullet hole" but I suspect
9 Mr Peress said "the connection with the bullet hole."
10 Question: How far was the bullet hole above
11 where your head had been?
12 Answer: Something like that" he must have
13 given a demonstration:
14 "Question: You have demonstrated something
15 around 6 inches?
16 Answer: Yes, it could be from 5 inches to 10
17 inches."
18 If you go to bundle M65, page 20. This is
19 Mr Peress's statement to -- I am so sorry, could we go
20 back to M65, page 1. M65 page 1 is his statement to
21 the Treasury Solicitor and in paragraph 4 at the bottom
22 of the page, he said:
23 "After taking the picture of the Saracen,
24 shooting was going on in Rossville Street. I went
25 carefully down Chamberlain Street and at the
1 Eden Street corner I held up my cameras saying
2 'press'. There was a soldier at the corner of the
3 buildings on Eden Place. He was kneeling. After
4 saying 'press' I turned and crossed the street very
5 slowly. As I got to the footpath the soldier shot at
6 me from the hip. The bullet smashed the second window
7 of number 6, missing me by a few inches."
8 It says "number 6", but that looks as if it
9 must be wrong since number 6 is some considerable way
10 away from the spot which Mr Peress is describing. If
11 we go to M65.55, we will find the map which is attached
12 to Mr Peress's statement to this Tribunal and what he
13 says is that the bullet hit the ground floor windowsill
14 on the house marked E on his map. That is the house
15 which is number 13 or number 9 on the eastern side of
16 Chamberlain Street. If one goes to M65.20, one will
17 find paragraph 9 of his statement, where he says,
18 beginning at the second sentence:
19 "I advanced further up Chamberlain Street to
20 the place marked C on the attached map. I then peeked
21 around the corner of Chamberlain Street and Eden Place
22 and saw a paratrooper at approximately point D on the
23 attached map. The paratrooper was in a crouched
24 position in full battledress wearing a helmet with the
25 visor up. He was holding his rifle at his side
1 parallel to his hip. He was looking in the direction
2 of Harvey Street. The soldier made eye contact with
3 me. I stepped out from the cover of the corner and
4 held my cameras up above my head and shouted 'press'.
5 He then fired a shot at me. I then quickly headed for
6 cover further up Chamberlain Street in the direction of
7 the Rossville flats. I saw where the bullet had
8 impacted. It had hit the ground floor windowsill of
9 the house marked E on the attached map. About four
10 days after Bloody Sunday I went to check out the bullet
11 hole with Peter Pringle of The Sunday Times and it was
12 still there."
13 That appears to be saying, if I have
14 understood it correctly, that the shot was not between
15 five or ten inches above his head, but at ground floor
16 windowsill level which, if Mr Peress is using
17 "windowsill" in the normal sense would mean
18 considerable lower than five or ten inches above
19 somebody's head.
20 We have now got Mr Peress's photographs and,
21 thanks to him, we have them in sequence. Can we have
22 P7, page 787. Bundle P7 has the photographs of
23 Mr Peress and Mr Grimaldi enlarged and in the sequence
24 in which they took them. This is the first one in the
25 sequence and it is taken at the top of
1 Chamberlain Street with, as one can see, a number of
2 people in it.
3 If you go then to 788, which is the next in
4 the sequence, it is Mr Peress who took this photograph
5 of people sheltering at the wall at the top of
6 Chamberlain Street. Then 789, this is the photograph
7 of the youths behind the shield, advancing on the
8 barricade. 790, that is somebody being carried off
9 hurt down Chamberlain Street, it is at the top, one can
10 see the sign of the 720 Bar on the left of the
11 photograph. 791 is another picture of the same scene
12 from another angle. 792 is another picture of youths
13 behind a corrugated iron sheet. 793, at this stage
14 Mr Peress has reached the alley that leads into
15 Eden Place. One cannot see the soldier, or any soldier
16 in this photograph but anyway that is a photograph that
17 he took at that stage, presumably before a soldier
18 appeared on the scene.
19 The next photograph is at 794 and we will
20 come back to that later, but by now Mr Peress has got
21 down to the bottom of Chamberlain Street and indeed is
22 taking photographs of what is happening at the south of
23 the Rossville Street car park.
24 Mr Peress's account is corroborated to some
25 extent by evidence -- may we have AM 340.3? This is a
1 portion of the statement of John Mitchell McLaughlin.
2 He, at paragraph 143:
3 "50 or so people who had been up at barrier
4 14 then ran into Chamberlain Street and south down into
5 the courtyard of the Rossville flats where we all
6 thought that we would be safe. When we left the Army
7 had not yet come through barrier 13."
8 What I think is happened is they had heard
9 the sound of roaring of engines of the troops coming
10 through barrier 12:
11 "14: As I was running south down
12 Chamberlain Street I heard my first live shot of the
13 day. I heard this shot just as I was running past the
14 opening on the west side of Chamberlain Street called
15 Eden Place. It was unmistakably a high velocity rifle
16 shot, but I did not see who fired it or in what
17 direction. I ran past the opening of Eden Place and
18 took cover behind a house at the point which is marked
19 with an A on the attached map."
20 To see that we need to go to page 11.
21 Point A on the attached map is number 14
22 Chamberlain Street. If we may then go back to page 3
23 at paragraph 15:
24 "I turned round at this point to see who had
25 fired the shot, and I saw a photographer standing about
1 10 feet from me and immediately to my north at the
2 point marked with a B on the attached plan. This
3 photographer was frozen to the spot and seemed unable
4 to move. He looked foreign to me. He was tall, thin
5 and dark, and had a number of cameras hung around his
6 neck." That must be Mr Peress because he is for these
7 purposes foreign, and who is tall, thin and dark:
8 "I cannot remember what he was wearing but
9 I think he may have been wearing a green or khaki coat
10 and a neckerchief to protect him from the gas. I have
11 no memory of him wearing a hat. He had his hands high
12 above his head in the air and was looking to the west
13 through the opening at Eden Place. It seemed to me
14 that he was looking at someone and I stepped out from
15 behind the building where I was taking shelter to see
16 what he was looking at.
17 "16: I saw a soldier there. I have only a
18 vague memory of that soldier, but I think he was bare
19 headed. I have no memory of him wearing a gas mask.
20 The soldier lifted his rifle up to his shoulder and it
21 seemed to me that he was aiming at the photographer.
22 I shouted at the photographer to run towards me and
23 just at that moment a shot rang out. I immediately
24 thought the soldier had shot the photographer as he
25 could hardly miss from that range. However, I was not
1 actually looking at the soldier when the shot was fired
2 but it seemed to me that it must have been him who
3 fired the shot. No warning was shouted by the
4 soldier. Nor were any civilians attacking soldiers in
5 this area.
6 "17: I saw a puff of dust and a lump of
7 brickwork fly out of the wall of the house immediately
8 behind me. Half a brick came out of the wall where the
9 bullet struck it. The position where this wall was is
10 marked on the attached map with a C. The brick was one
11 of a row of bricks immediately above a window.
12 "18: I was really panicking at this point
13 and started running again south down
14 Chamberlain Street.""
15 If we go back to the map at AM 340.11, we
16 will find that C to which he refers is number 13 on the
17 eastern-most side of the street. B is where the
18 witness says that he saw Mr Peress. A is where he says
19 he was. I was looking to see whether I could find a
20 photograph of Mr Peress, that is one but we will come
21 to it in due course.
22 If we could go back to 340, page 8, at
23 paragraph 47 of his statement, Mr McLaughlin says this:
24 "After Bloody Sunday I was interviewed by The
25 Sunday Times Insight team and we revisited the spot in
1 Chamberlain Street. I told The Sunday Times Insight
2 team about the shot that had been fired and when we
3 looked where the soldier must have been when he fired
4 and where the bullet struck the wall, we worked out
5 that actually the soldier must have been firing at me.
6 He could only have missed me by a matter of inches.
7 With hindsight, the first shot that the soldier fired
8 may have been a warning shot. However, I believe that
9 the second shot was a serious effort at blowing my head
10 off.
11 LORD SAVILLE: Does he mention a second shot
12 earlier in his statement?
13 MR CLARKE: Yes, in this sense, if we go back
14 to 340.3, what he is saying, as I read the statement,
15 is that, firstly at paragraph 14:
16 "As I was running south down
17 Chamberlain Street, I heard my first live shot of the
18 day".
19 That is what he is referring to I think as
20 the first shot.
21 LORD SAVILLE: I follow that.
22 MR CLARKE: Subsequently he refers to the
23 shot which he did see something of.
24 There is obviously a considerable difference
25 between the account of Lieutenant N and Private 019 on
1 the one hand and those of Mr Peress and Mr McLaughlin
2 on the other. According to Lieutenant N he was faced
3 by a menacing crowd and fired two shots and then
4 a third to disperse them. According to Mr Peress, when
5 the soldier shot no one else within sight or range. If
6 we go back to transcript, Day 6, page 72, Widgery
7 transcript, after the break at D he was asked this:
8 "Question: When you got to Eden Place did a
9 section of the crowd turn into Eden Place towards the
10 soldier you have mentioned?
11 Answer: No.
12 Question: So when he fired were there no
13 other people within sight or range?
14 Answer: No".
15 If you look at the answer immediately against
16 D he was asked this question:
17 "On the particular occasion of this march
18 when you went down Chamberlain Street, were you alone?
19 Answer: Yes. In a way I was between the
20 Army and the crowd."
21 I am not quite sure where is the crowd to
22 which he was referring in that answer. It may be that
23 he is referring to a crowd at the end of
24 Chamberlain Street, by which I mean the south of
25 Chamberlain Street; or it may be he is referring to a
1 crowd behind him and to the north, but what exactly he
2 meant is not apparent from the transcript and he does
3 not seem to have been asked exactly what it was that he
4 was saying.
5 Some support for Lieutenant N's account is to
6 be found in the statement which may be found at AN17.3
7 which is the statement of a witness called Joseph
8 Alphonsus Nicholas who says that he and some others
9 went to rescue on old man who was being beaten by some
10 paratroopers, including the soldier who subsequently
11 fired towards the Chamberlain Street/Eden Place
12 junction.
13 If you look at paragraph 8 of his statement,
14 he says this:
15 "From the junction of Chamberlain Street and
16 Harvey Street, I looked to my right into the gap which
17 leads out to Eden Place from the west side of
18 Chamberlain Street. In the gap I saw three or four
19 paratroopers beating an old man. I have marked their
20 approximate position at C on the attached map."
21 If we may have page 18 of this volume we will
22 see that C is depicted by him as in the middle of the
23 alley that leads from Eden Place proper to
24 Chamberlain Street.
25 If we go back to Am17.3, he says, in
1 paragraph 8, fourth line down:
2 "The old man had grey hair. He was still on
3 his feet, but was bent over. His head was down. The
4 Paras were whacking him with their rifle butts and
5 kicking and punching him. I knew they were
6 paratroopers because they wore smocks and their
7 headgear was not standard issue.
8 "9: Together with a few others from the
9 crowd, I advanced towards point C to try to rescue the
10 old man. I tried to grab him. I managed to get hold
11 of his arm. I was trying to pull him away from the
12 soldiers. I had my head down, but suddenly I was aware
13 of one of the Paras bringing his rifle up and firing a
14 shot. He only fired one shot and I immediately
15 retreated towards Chamberlain Street. I could see
16 where the bullet had hit the brick above the ground
17 floor, front room window of the house at point D on the
18 attached map" number 13.
19 "There was a large chunk of brick missing.
20 I remember the sound of the shot was extremely loud.
21 There may have been a second shot fired, but if there
22 was, I was too deafened to hear it. There was then a
23 general movement south down towards the Rossville flats
24 and I hurried down that way. Everyone on
25 Chamberlain Street was very concerned by this stage."
1 So on that account the firing was done in
2 order to ward off the rescue of an old man. Another
3 account appears at AC64.4, in the witness statement of
4 Patrick Anthony Clarke who also says that he saw an old
5 man being beaten by soldiers, but says nothing about
6 people advancing to rescue him. If we could have the
7 second half of the page. He says there at paragraph
8 10:
9 "There was a small sweet shop called Jack's
10 at the corner of Eden Place", and we have seen that on
11 the photographs:
12 "At the corner of Eden Place and the alleyway
13 that ran parallel and immediately to the west of
14 Chamberlain Street. I have marked where Jack's was
15 with a C on the map. The top half of the building was
16 derelict but the bottom floor of the building was the
17 sweet shop. I saw a man come out of the shop door that
18 opened on to Eden Place. He was in his late 40s or
19 50s. I then saw a soldier coming from the alleyway
20 marked point C on the map, into Eden Place where he
21 grabbed the gentleman by the scruff of his neck. The
22 soldier had a baton. He whacked the man on the head
23 with the baton and pulled him round the corner into the
24 alleyway at point why where I could no longer see him.
25 "11: Almost immediately after the old man
1 had disappeared, a second soldier put his head around
2 the same corner and looked into Chamberlain Street in
3 my direction. He was dressed like a Para and he had a
4 potty helmet on. He was carrying an SLR rifle. He
5 looked east on to Chamberlain Street very briefly and
6 then dodged back into the alleyway at point C behind
7 the corner of Jack's sweet shop. I then saw his gun
8 appear from around the corner. All I could see was the
9 soldier's arms and his gun. I could not see his face
10 because he did not look round the corner. The gun was
11 not pointing directly at me, it was slightly elevated.
12 From the height of the gun I could tell that the
13 soldier was on his knees. The photograph attached as
14 attachment 2 was taken recently, and shows me crouched
15 in the same position as the soldier must have been."
16 We will look at that in a moment:
17 "The Para then started firing. He obviously
18 could not see what he was firing at. The shots hit the
19 house behind me in Chamberlain Street, marked point D
20 on the map." That is number 13:
21 "The wall that they hit is shown in the
22 photograph attached as attachment 3. He fired quite a
23 few shots in my direction and the photographs which are
24 attached to this statement as attachments 4 to 7", may
25 I say we are going to need to look at this in hard copy
1 so if somebody could get out bundle AC, which is file 2
2 of the A bundle. The photographs are at A64, 10, 11,
3 12 and 13 and 14. Continuing with the narrative on the
4 screen and coming back to the photographs, he fired
5 quite a few shots in my direction, the photographs are
6 attached to the statement attachments 4 to 7 show some
7 of the bullet holes in the wall:
8 "These photographs were taken on 29th October
9 1998. All this happened in one fluid movement and
10 I had no time to move. I presumed the Para saw people
11 running south down Chamberlain Street and was firing at
12 them. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket at that time
13 which was not done up. Some days after Bloody Sunday
14 I removed the coat from my car. I put it in the
15 laundry basket for cleaning. My wife subsequently put
16 the coat in the washing machine. When it was hung up
17 to dry she then noticed a hole. It was just above the
18 left-hand pocket. It was then that I realised that one
19 of the bullets must have passed through my jacket
20 missing me by inches. I wish to state that my wife
21 brought it to my attention. I cannot say precisely how
22 many shots the soldier fired, but I thought that he had
23 emptied his magazine."
24 If we look at the photographs, can we have
25 AC64.10, attachment number 2 is the photograph of the
1 witness in the position, though not at the spot, in the
2 position in which he says the soldier was firing which
3 is not dissimilar from that which is the position in
4 which Lieutenant N appears in the photograph that we
5 looked at a little earlier.
6 Attachment No. 3 is said to be the wall that
7 was hit and that is the wall of what I am calling --
8 I do not know whether the numbering is still the same
9 -- number 13 Chamberlain Street on the east side with
10 Harvey Street climbing upwards on the left. If we look
11 at A64.11, what is being pointed to is what is said to
12 be a bullet hole which is two bricks in from the corner
13 near the road sign at about torso level.
14 Attachment 5 at 64.12, is said to show,
15 I assume, either one or two bullet holes about two
16 bricks in from the window facing Chamberlain Street.
17 Attachment 6 at AC64.13 is said to show a
18 bullet hole to the south of the window facing
19 Chamberlain Street above head height, about four bricks
20 down from the top of the window and in the brick which
21 abuts the window.
22 Attachment number 7 at A64.14 is a hole --
23 presumably said to be in a wall at a spot not entirely
24 clear but what looks like above head height because the
25 witness is pointing upwards, whoever that hand is is
1 pointing upwards. We will have to get the originals of
2 these photographs because in the way in which they have
3 been circulated they are copies, there must be
4 originals somewhere. But on that account there would
5 appear to be considerably more than three shots fired
6 at number 13.
7 Michael Bridge was one of those wounded in
8 sector 2, and if we may have AB84.29, we will find the
9 map which is attached to his statement to this
10 Tribunal. He gives an account of a soldier firing in
11 the Chamberlain Street/Eden Place area. He says that
12 after the APCs had moved through barrier 14 he ran with
13 the crowd down Chamberlain Street and turned right into
14 Eden Place and was standing at point A, which we can
15 see on the map which was practically at the corner of
16 the wasteground and Eden Place, just outside Jack's
17 sweet shop when he saw certainly two, and possibly
18 three soldiers climbing out of the back of an APC
19 parked at the position marked on the map, the position
20 marked on the map is the diagram of an APC actually in
21 Eden Place, the street; the diagram shows it, if I have
22 understood it correctly, as pointing in
23 a north-westerly direction though the photographs
24 appear to show that it was pointing in a north-easterly
25 direction just below Eden Place, the street.
1 If we go to 84, page 4 and pick up his
2 statement at paragraph 24, he says:
3 "They fired two, three, four shots or so:
4 definitely not a whole volley. I can recall that one
5 soldier definitely fired in my direction. He fired his
6 rifle from somewhere about waist/chest height. It was
7 definitely not an aimed shot from the shoulder.
8 I estimate that I would have been less than ten feet
9 from him when he opened fire.
10 "25: I definitely recall a sense of a bullet
11 hitting the wall of the house behind me. When I went
12 back after Bloody Sunday, I could see that a chunk had
13 been taken out of the wall about halfway up the house
14 on the corner of Chamberlain Street and Harvey Street
15 belonging to Tony Robertson." I am afraid I do not
16 know which house that is:
17 "26: As soon as the soldier had fired
18 I turned on my heel and fled back down Eden Place into
19 Chamberlain Street. I can recall I saw a man fall. My
20 recollection is that he was an old man, but I cannot
21 give any further detail. Old may be misleading, but
22 I definitely recall that he was older than me - I was
23 25 at the time. My impression was that he was shot.
24 "27: I can remember going up and helping him
25 to his feet. Thereafter he continued running down
1 Chamberlain Street. There were still a lot of people
2 running down Chamberlain Street, but a few seemed to be
3 coming up the street. One of these was a young lad who
4 had shouted something like 'a boy has been shot up
5 there' meaning somewhere in the area of the Rossville
6 flats car park. I had no recollection of soldiers
7 running down Chamberlain Street at this time."
8 We will come to what happens thereafter in
9 due course. There are a number of other witnesses who
10 give significant evidence about firing in this area.
11 I am going to refer to five of them. Firstly may we
12 have AM108.2, which is the witness statement of William
13 Terrence McClements. He says at paragraph 8:
14 "I was just about to run when I saw to my
15 right and slightly behind me, the muzzle of a rifle
16 sticking out into Chamberlain Street from the southern
17 corner of the opening marked C."
18 That is the end of the alley leading from
19 Eden Place as it leads into Chamberlain Street:
20 "A soldier in light-coloured fatigue and an
21 American GI's style helmet emerged from the opening
22 carrying his rifle at waist height. He did not step
23 out on to Chamberlain Street but lent on the wall at
24 the corner which I have just described. He held his
25 rifle as if he was left handed in that the butt of the
1 rifle was held by him in his left hand. He saw me
2 looking at him and very casually swung his rifle in my
3 direction and fired. I flinched and thought, Jesus.
4 The bullet hit the stone archway above the window on
5 the ground floor of the house opposite point C and took
6 a chunk of brick out of it. The house is hatched on
7 the attached map. I was not aware of anyone beside me
8 in Chamberlain Street when the soldier fired. Also as
9 I was standing by the window which the bullet hit I can
10 only presume that the soldier aimed at me. I am
11 certain that the soldier gave no warning before he
12 fired.
13 "9: I turned and ran south."
14 If we turn to AM108.10, we will see that the
15 soldier was said to have been at C, which, as
16 I described is where the alley leading from Eden Place
17 leads into Chamberlain Street, practically on to
18 Chamberlain Street, not quite. The house where the
19 bullet landed, which is hatched and marked B, is number
20 13. If we could then have AM120.2. This is the
21 statement of William Columbo McCloskey. He says in
22 paragraph 9 after having seen paratroopers appear at
23 barrier 14:
24 "9: I ran from where I was in front of
25 barrier 14, in a southerly direction down Chamberlain
1 Street and then cut right (to the west) into the
2 wasteground at Eden Place through an opening opposite
3 Harvey Street. The opening in the middle of which
4 there used to be a burnt out Bedford van is marked A on
5 the map. Jacky's shop which used to be on the northern
6 corner of the opening is hatched on the map at grid
7 reference 013 and my route from the barrier 14 through
8 the point marked A and into Eden Place is marked on the
9 map and the photograph attached.
10 "10: I saw two Saracens drive at full speed
11 south down Rossville Street from the direction of
12 Little James Street and turn into the wasteground in
13 Eden Place. One Saracen stopped facing towards the
14 north end of the Rossville Flats and the other towards
15 the back of the houses on the west side of Chamberlain
16 Street. Seven or eight paratroopers jumped out of each
17 Saracen and scattered in all directions. One
18 paratrooper, I think he was a Second Lieutenant ran
19 towards me in a westerly direction across Eden Place
20 and I decided to have a go at him. I remember that
21 there was a puddle of water between us and someone may
22 have slipped in it. The paratrooper and I ran around
23 the puddle from opposite directions. I hit the
24 paratrooper in the lower body and immediately turned
25 round and ran in the direction from which I came. The
1 positions of the Saracens and the area in Eden Place
2 where I hit the paratrooper are indicated on the
3 photograph attached."
4 We ought I think to look both at the
5 photograph and the map. If we take AM120.7, we will
6 find the map. He describes his route from barrier 14
7 by the route which ends with the arrow from barrier 14
8 and down Chamberlain Street and into Eden Place. If we
9 look at AM120.8, we will find the photograph. What it
10 shows is an arrow traversing the same route as
11 indicated on the map coming out into the wasteground.
12 Where the arrow first arrives in the wasteground it
13 reads "area where I hit Para". He has positioned in
14 this photograph one Saracen on the wasteground just to
15 the south of Eden Place but not very far off
16 Rossville Street and another -- that one facing, so far
17 as one can tell from the drawing, in an easterly
18 direction -- and the other on the same bit of
19 wasteground, but facing in a southerly direction.
20 Neither of those tally with the photographs.
21 If one goes back to A120.2, he had described,
22 in paragraph 10, hitting the paratrooper in the lower
23 body. It may be, we may discover, that he is the
24 individual whom Lieutenant N described as having four
25 lumps of concrete in his hand which he discharged at,
1 Lieutenant N himself.
2 Paragraph 11:
3 "I had just about reached Chamberlain Street
4 when I heard a live shot fired from behind me, that is
5 from Eden Place. At that time I already knew the
6 difference between live Army rounds and other types of
7 live rounds or rubber bullets being fired. I have no
8 doubt that it was fired from there because I heard it
9 hit the masonry on the Meenan's house which is on the
10 east side of Chamberlain Street and immediately to the
11 south of its junction with Harvey Street. The Meenan's
12 house is hatched on the map", and what he had hatched
13 on the map was number 13. It is here described as the
14 Meenan's house, whether that is a different house to
15 that referred to by Michael Bridge as belonging to Tony
16 Robertson, the houses may have belonged to different
17 people at different stages, I know not:
18 "The bullet which I believe was fired at me,
19 since there was no one else around, hit the brick next
20 to the top arch of the window on the right-hand side of
21 the ground floor of the Meenan's house. The bullet
22 removed a chunk of brick which has since been
23 replaced. Such was the angle and height of the
24 ricochet that the shot could only have been fired from
25 the direction of the wasteground at Eden Place. I did
1 not see or hear any other soldiers on
2 Chamberlain Street who could have fired the shot.
3 "12: I did not stop when I heard the shot,
4 but rather continued to run in a southerly direction
5 down Chamberlain Street. As I was running I heard
6 another live shot from behind me. I believe that this
7 second shot was fired from further north on
8 Chamberlain Street. I do not know whether anyone was
9 hit by this shot."
10 As one can see from this evidence, there is
11 more than one person who says that he was the only
12 person who could have been being shot at.
13 If we may then have AC40.1, the third
14 statement I want to look at is that of William Leo
15 Carlin, C-A-R-L-I-N, who says that he was the last
16 person to go down Chamberlain Street. I take it up at
17 paragraph 2, two lines up from the bottom he says:
18 "The next thing that I remember was that the
19 crowd began to run away from the barrier. I do not
20 know why they ran, but I ran with them away from the
21 barrier and down Chamberlain Street."
22 "4: As I ran down Chamberlain Street towards
23 the Rossville Flats I was the last person in the crowd
24 to do so. Most of the people had already dispersed by
25 this stage. As I was running down Chamberlain Street,
1 I thought that the Army were about to send a snatch
2 squad from barrier 14. I did not think that it was
3 anything more serious than this and I had not heard any
4 shots at this stage.
5 For some reason, and I have no idea why,
6 I doubled back as I was going along Chamberlain Street
7 and went back up towards William Street. I went as far
8 as the junction with Harvey Street and stood on the
9 east side of Chamberlain Street at the point marked B
10 on the attached plan," which is just outside number 13:
11 "And looked north-west into the wasteground
12 which is Eden Place.
13 "6: I was immediately aware of two soldiers
14 on the rear corner of a house on Chamberlain Street
15 which backs on to Eden Place at the point marked C."
16 The point marked C is where Lieutenant N appears in the
17 photograph.
18 "7: I cannot now recall what the soldiers
19 looked like, except that they were younger than me,
20 probably in their early twenties. One of them was
21 standing up, the other one was kneeling. Both held
22 guns in the firing position.
23 "8: There were immediately two shots fired
24 from the soldier. I do not know whether one soldier
25 fired twice or they both fired once, but there were
1 definitely two shots fired. They were fired towards me
2 and hit the wall above my head. I do not know whether
3 the shots were actually aimed at me, or whether they
4 were simply warning shots. There is no doubt that the
5 soldiers fired live ammunition and I have no idea how
6 the soldiers missed me as I was only standing 20 yards
7 or so away from them.
8 "9: I was extremely frightened and ran down
9 Chamberlain Street in the direction of the Rossville
10 flats as fast as I could. My main thought at the time
11 was that I might be shot in the back. I was in
12 a panic."
13 If we may have AM304.3, we will find the
14 witness statement of Joseph McKinney, who gives a
15 slightly different account. If we pick it up at the
16 end of paragraph 9, three lines down from the top of
17 the page:
18 "Word circulated through the crowd that the
19 soldiers had advanced south from Little James Street to
20 Rossville Street. I waited a while at the eastern end
21 of William Street to see what happened but I then
22 decided to leave the area. I remember thinking that it
23 was unusual that the soldiers had not attempted to
24 break through barrier 14. By the time I left the
25 eastern end of William Street, which was quite a while
1 (although I cannot be specific) after I first heard
2 live gunfire, only a handful of people were there."
3 Pausing there, there is quite a lot of
4 evidence that people at or around barrier 14 at the end
5 of William Street either heard the noise of the
6 Saracens revving up or driving down Little James Street
7 and then Rossville Street, or heard from others that
8 the Army were coming in and that the impetus to run
9 down Chamberlain Street, derived at any rate for some
10 of them, from knowing that the paratroopers were in the
11 Bogside rather than from seeing them come over barrier
12 14 and this witness is one who falls into that
13 category. In paragraph 10, he said:
14 "I then ran south down Chamberlain Street.
15 There were people to the south of me in
16 Chamberlain Street as I ran, but it was not crammed
17 full of people. I could have run faster if I had
18 wanted to. I cannot now remember what I was thinking
19 as I ran down Chamberlain Street. I think I heard the
20 sound of live shots being fired (behind me and to my
21 right) from the junction of William Street and
22 Rossville Street which was the same area as where I had
23 heard them fired from previously. I could hear fairly
24 constant and steady single shots being fired from the
25 same area; it was not the sound of machine gunfire.
1 The shots seemed to be being fired to the south down
2 Rossville Street.
3 "11: As I was running south down
4 Chamberlain Street past the junction with
5 Harvey Street, I looked to my right and saw a soldier
6 crouched down on one knee, at the point marked C on the
7 attached map. I cannot now describe him in detail,
8 although he was wearing a khaki uniform and a close
9 fitting helmet."
10 If we look at AM304.8, we will find that
11 point C is just at the mouth of Chamberlain Street at
12 its intersection with Eden Place which is where one of
13 the other witnesses places a soldier but not at the
14 corner of Eden Place and the wasteground. If we go
15 back to 304.3, carrying on where we have gone to. At
16 paragraph 12:
17 "I continued to run south down
18 Chamberlain Street and as I reached the point marked D
19 on the attached map a shot was fired above my head.
20 I looked up and saw dust rising from the top corner of
21 what was either the downstairs window or door of a
22 house approximately at the point marked E on the
23 attached map. The dust rose from a point approximately
24 eight or ten feet from the ground. I recall turning
25 round and seeing the soldier who had fired the shot, to
1 my north near Duffy's bookmakers at the junction with
2 Harvey Street at point F on the attached map. He was
3 approximately 20 feet behind me. I cannot now recall
4 whether the sound of the shot made me turn and look at
5 the soldier or whether I turned and then saw the shot
6 fired by the soldier. The soldier only fired one
7 shot. I am not sure who he was aiming at. I am not
8 sure why he fired a shot; no one was doing anything to
9 him. I started to run faster at this point."
10 If we go back to the map at AM304.8, we will
11 see that he describes the shot as landing at E which is
12 much further down Chamberlain Street than anybody else
13 places it and the soldier as having fired from F which
14 is at the corner of Eden Place and Chamberlain Street
15 itself.
16 Lastly, may we look at AO65.4. This is
17 a portion of the witness statement of Sean Eugene
18 O'Neill who says at paragraph 16:
19 "A water cannon then advanced towards us from
20 the east of barrier 14. I believe it was used twice
21 that day, but the first time I had been rioting in
22 Sackville Street. The second time it was used I was
23 within twenty yards of it but the cannon was not very
24 powerful. However it was too cold that day to be
25 sprayed with water. If I had been sprayed by water
1 I would have had to have gone home. It was very common
2 for large scale crowds to panic but my friends and
3 I did not panic. To avoid being sprayed I ran a few
4 yards west along William Street and then stopped.
5 After the cannon retreated I started to return towards
6 barrier 14. I had been in that area in total for about
7 10 to 15 minutes when I heard a commotion from Little
8 James Street. I stalled for a few seconds but then
9 barrier 14 was opened up by the soldier so I turned and
10 ran south along Chamberlain Street and then turned
11 right in a westerly direction along Eden Place.
12 "17: When I approached the wasteground at
13 Eden Place, a Saracen had already driven east across
14 Eden Place from Rossville Street and had swung round
15 and parked around the point marked 9 on the map 6789."
16 If we look at AO65.30, the point marked 9 on
17 the map is in Eden Place practically at the back of the
18 Chamberlain Street houses which is very close but not
19 exactly where the APC appears to have ended up,
20 according to the photographs. If we go back to where
21 we were before, 65.4 he says, this, paragraph 17, the
22 third line:
23 "The front of the Saracen was facing in
24 a westerly direction and the back door was facing
25 towards Chamberlain Street. I knew that after a riot
1 the soldiers used to advance along Chamberlain Street
2 and from Rossville Street into Eden Place at the same
3 time. I knew that it was difficult to escape when they
4 did this because we could be trapped by their pincer
5 movement.
6 "18: I carried on running towards the
7 Saracen when the back door of the Saracen was swung
8 open and a very large soldier with spider-like legs
9 climbed out of the vehicle and stood on its south
10 side. He was fairish coloured hair and was not wearing
11 face paint. I noticed other soldiers getting out of
12 the back of the Saracen and standing on the north side
13 of the vehicle. I remember thinking this was unusual
14 because normally the smaller soldiers were situated at
15 the back of the vehicle as they were agile and the
16 bigger soldiers were situated at the front of the
17 vehicle.
18 "19: I was about ten feet away from the tall
19 soldier and was running towards him when he lifted his
20 SLR and fired a round in an easterly direction towards
21 Chamberlain Street. I am not sure what he was aiming
22 at. This happened as soon as he came out of the
23 Saracen. He missed me and I ducked down as he fired
24 another shot in the same direction. I then ran past
25 him to the south of the vehicle and he fired two more
1 shots in the same direction. It took me about two to
2 three seconds only to run past him. These were the
3 first live shots which were fired that day in that area
4 (other than those shots which hit Damien Donaghy and
5 John Johnston)."
6 So on that account the shots were fired by a
7 soldier as he got out, as soon as he got out of the APC
8 which was in the wasteground. This witness says that
9 these were the first live shots, other than those
10 hitting Damien Donaghy and John Johnston fired that day
11 in that area and it may be that the shots fired by
12 Lieutenant N were the first shots fired that afternoon
13 after Support Company had gone through barrier 12.
14 Lieutenant N, as I have said, was in the first Pig and
15 his evidence to Lord Widgery was that no other firing
16 had registered with him at the time that he fired.
17 That one gets from looking at Widgery, Day 12, page 67
18 at E, where he was asked, the second half of the page,
19 this at E:
20 "Question: Did you hear, apart from the
21 shots you fired, any other firing at that stage?
22 Answer: Not that I registered, Sir, no."
23 If those were the first shots that were fired
24 the effect may have been to cause other soldiers in the
25 Mortar Platoon, or elsewhere, to believe that the Army
1 was being fired on. Although if you go to Day 12, page
2 79, at E, Lieutenant N was asked this, the second
3 question after D:
4 "Question: You did not see anyone fire those
5 shots which were the first shots you heard in that
6 area?
7 Answer: No.
8 Question: Did you consider what effect the
9 shots which you fired into Chamberlain Street might
10 have on other paratroopers?
11 Answer: No, sir.
12 Question: Might they have caused other
13 paratroopers to consider that they were being shot at?
14 Answer: No, sir.
15 Question: But any soldiers who did not see
16 you fire would simply have heard high velocity shots?
17 Answer: That is correct, Sir.
18 Question: And you accounted for three high
19 velocity shots?
20 Answer: Yes.
21 Question: So if some people consider that
22 the first shots they heard were three high velocity
23 shots, those shots might have come from you?
24 Answer: Yes, sir.
25 Question: Because prior to your firing those
1 three shots you heard no other shots?
2 Answer: I heard no shots which I was aware
3 of."
4 Conversely the shots may have suggested to
5 civilians that the Army was firing at civilians. This
6 is the theory expounded in Channel 4's television
7 documentary Secret History of Bloody Sunday which we
8 will look at in due course. The theory that is there
9 expounded is that the reverberations of Lieutenant N's
10 initial shots down Chamberlain Street, coupled with the
11 sight of the APCs coming down Rossville Street caused
12 renegade IRA men from the Bogside to fire because they
13 believed that the Bogside was under attack and that is
14 the theory challenged by Martin McGuinness in the
15 article which came out after that programme was
16 published and which we saw before the Easter break.
17 As we have seen, the Yellow Card which deals
18 with firing at individuals, tells soldiers to fire only
19 aimed shots. Lieutenant N's firing above the heads of
20 the crowd was not something justified in terms of the
21 card. If the Secret History thesis is correct, it my
22 provide an example of why firing in the air is
23 unacceptable in terms of the Yellow Card, although it
24 would not provide an answer to the question: what, if
25 the circumstances were as he describes, was N supposed
1 to do?
2 If we look at Day 12, page 78 we will find
3 the question canvassed in the evidence of soldier N.
4 He was asked, the second question after A:
5 "Question: Can you find in the Yellow Card
6 anything which justifies that shot, or do you not need
7 to see the card? -- He says he does not need to see
8 the card.
9 "Question: Is there anything in that card
10 which justifies those two shots?
11 Answer: No, sir, there is not.
12 Question: Do you now admit that those two
13 shots were unjustified as far as your instructions and
14 orders were concerned?
15 Answer: No, sir.
16 Question: What is your justification, if
17 there is no justification to be found in the Yellow
18 Card?
19 Answer: I fired those shots to save life.
20 If that crowd had gone through that little gap to my
21 position and started stoning me at point blank range,
22 they would undoubtedly have injured myself and my
23 soldiers."
24 Lieutenant N is not, however, the only
25 candidate for the firer of the first live shot. An
1 alternative theory is suggested by the evidence of
2 Charles Morrison which appears at AM427.2 for these
3 purposes. Mr Morrison was a member of the executive
4 organising committee of NICRA in Londonderry and an
5 Executive Committee for NICRA in Northern Ireland, as
6 appears from paragraph 8, the last sentence. He was a
7 steward on the march. His evidence is that after
8 witnessing rioting at barrier 14 he began walking west
9 along William Street and turned into Rossville Street.
10 As he reached the beginning of the wasteground he heard
11 a revving of engines and looked round to see a number
12 of Army vehicles driving south. The first Pig in the
13 group drew level with him on his right-hand side at a
14 point which he identifies on his map, which is at
15 AM427.13,. He says a Pig drew level with him at point
16 C and he veered off to the left across the wasteground
17 around Pilot Row, heading towards the Rossville flats
18 car park.
19 If we may then go back to 427.3 at paragraph
20 16, he says this, it is the last word on the page, the
21 very bottom of the page, the last word:
22 "As I looked, the first Pig seemed to stop
23 and I heard the screech of the metal as the back doors
24 flew open and a number of soldiers jumped out. I am
25 sure that there were at least two soldiers, but
1 I focused on one in particular. This soldier moved to
2 the east side of the Pig. He dropped down on one knee
3 and took up a full firing position, aiming his rifle
4 south along Rossville Street. I am not sure whether he
5 was aiming at the rubble barricade which ran across
6 Rossville Street between Glenfada Park North and block
7 1 of the Rossville flats or actually into the Rossville
8 flats car park. The soldiers were panning out all over
9 the place. Another soldier was standing with his gun
10 to his shoulder. I was between 30 and 50 metres away
11 and continuing to run to the courtyard of the flats by
12 this point and could not say exactly where on
13 Rossville Street the Pigs stopped and the soldiers
14 jumped out. My impression of the soldiers was that
15 some of them were wearing helmets but I think I also
16 noticed a number of red berets. I think they were all
17 wearing camouflage and some of them had a substance
18 like coal dust blackening out their faces.
19 As soon as the soldier jumped out of the Pigs
20 and I saw the first soldier take up his firing position
21 facing south I heard the first live shot of the day.
22 As the shot rang out I heard a cracking noise and saw
23 the soldier's rifle kick back and knew that it was him
24 who had fired the shot.
25 18: The other thing I noticed as I looked
1 back towards Rossville Street, was a vehicle, was
2 I believe a Jeep turn off Rossville Street and on to
3 the wasteground between Eden Place and Pilot Row.
4 I believe that the Jeep had been following the first
5 Pig south down Rossville Street. I believe that the
6 Jeep stopped at approximately the point marked D on the
7 attached map."
8 If you go back to AM427.13, the spot marked D
9 is just below the D of Eden Place on the wasteground.
10 So this witness appears to place the first shot, or at
11 any rate the first shot that he heard -- the two are
12 not necessarily the same -- as having come from a Pig
13 at spot C in Rossville Street itself. It is not clear
14 from that evidence who that soldier was or where
15 exactly he was when he fired the shot.
16 After Lieutenant N had fired the three shots
17 of which we have been speaking, he went and helped his
18 signaller who had detained a civilian, put the man in
19 Pig 1. One of the photographs that I was not able to
20 show yesterday for technical reasons was of the places
21 where various people who were arrested were taken. If
22 we look at P5, page 409, some I said, but was unable to
23 illustrate, were taken into a Pig. Here is -- it is
24 not terribly good on the screen, it is better in hard
25 copy -- Pig number 1 into which an arrested person is
1 being taken. It may be, I know not, that that is
2 someone of whom Lieutenant N was speaking. There is
3 certainly, on the right-hand side of the photograph a
4 signaller, that man appears to have wireless apparatus
5 on his back. The man who is being taken in, all you
6 really see on the photograph on the screen is his
7 hand. If you go back to paragraph 488 -- page 488 you
8 will find an arrested man being taken away and the
9 soldier in the foreground is in fact a signaller, he
10 has a radio on his back. Whether that is Lieutenant N
11 behind him or not, I do not, at present, know.
12 Lieutenant N next described moving back to
13 the wall at the back of the Chamberlain Street houses
14 and moving towards the end of Chamberlain Street where,
15 so he says, he saw a young man of about 20 come out
16 from behind the corner of number 36, that is to say the
17 last house on the end of Chamberlain Street at the
18 southwest corner. He said that the man came out,
19 ducked back briefly and then came out in a sort of
20 bowling position. One gets that at Day 12, page 67, at
21 the bottom of the page, the second half. He was asked
22 this, the last question but one:
23 "Question: As you moved up there towards the
24 end of Chamberlain Street, did something happen?
25 Answer: It did, sir, yes.
1 Question: What happened?
2 Answer: I saw a man come out from behind
3 this corner" and that as we shall see is the corner of
4 Chamberlain Street itself "it was a fairly young man
5 about 20-odd, he came out, ducked back briefly and came
6 out again in a nailbomb throwing position.
7 Question: Just show my Lord what you mean by
8 'a nailbomb throwing position'?
9 Answer: In a sort of bowling position",
10 which he demonstrated:
11 "Nail and petrol bombs tend to be thrown like
12 this, whereas a stone is normally thrown straight
13 forward.
14 Question: Did you form any view as to what
15 his target was?
16 Answer: I took his target to be my other
17 Pig.
18 Question: Your Platoon sergeant's Pig?
19 Answer: Yes", that is Sergeant O.
20 Question: How far would that Pig have been
21 away from where the man was who was in the throwing
22 position?
23 Answer: It was well within range of him,
24 Sir. It would have been about 20 metres.
25 Question: What did you think he was about to
1 throw.
2 Answer: A nailbomb, Sir.
3 Question: Did you see anything in his hand.
4 Answer: He had an object in his hand, Sir,
5 and it was smoking." Then he says that he has seen
6 nailbombs before:
7 "What did you do?
8 Answer: I fired one aimed shot.
9 Question: As far as you could tell did it
10 hit him?
11 Answer: I think it hit him in the right
12 thigh.
13 Question: What made you think you hit him in
14 the right thigh?
15 Answer: His other hand came across and sort
16 of grasped his thigh and he moved back to his right
17 which took him behind the cover of the wall there; he
18 was moving back this way as if his leg had been pulled
19 from under him."
20 If you go to Day 12, page 74, he was asked
21 this at F, the second half of the page -- just above F,
22 two questions above:
23 "Question: Did he throw the bomb?
24 Answer: He did not.
25 Question: Did he drop the bomb?
1 Answer: I did not see it drop.
2 Question: Do you know if he kept it in his
3 hands?
4 Answer: It was in his hands when he
5 disappeared from my sight.
6 Question: Did it go off in his hand when he
7 staggered off shot?
8 Answer: I did not hear any explosion."
9 Then he refutes the suggestion that what he
10 is saying is a lie.
11 If you look at P20, and if we could rotate
12 it, we will see the trajectory of a shot as shown on
13 the photograph. His three earlier shots we have
14 already seen. That shows a shot from the wasteground
15 immediately to the north of the wire fence, a fair bit
16 out from the Chamberlain Street houses at a target to
17 the west of the back wall, what is number 36 which is
18 the last house on the west side in Chamberlain Street.
19 If you look at the trajectory chart, which is Q7, which
20 we will need to look at in hard copy, if you look at Q7
21 you can see that N's first three shots, two sets show
22 him firing at what are described as number 13 and
23 number 14. Then his second shot, in fact on the chart
24 appears from close in to the back of the houses just
25 below Pilot Row, it is a slight difference from what is
1 on the photograph, which is him further out into Pilot
2 Row and the target is in each case at the south-west
3 corner of number 36.
4 Thereafter, according to his evidence, he
5 went back to Pig 2 which was Sergeant O's Pig where a
6 couple of soldiers at the back who said they had been
7 engaging some gunmen and that two of the soldiers had
8 been hit by acid bombs from flats. One of them had the
9 front of his trousers splashed with acid and was
10 gingerly holding them away from his legs because it was
11 stinging them. That would seem to be either soldier T
12 or soldier R.
13 Shortly after that he saw the company
14 commander, Major Loden, who had by now moved his
15 command Pig up to somewhere to the north of block 1.
16 We have seen that on the photographs, with the Pigs of
17 one of the other platoons nearby. He was then ordered
18 to bring his two Pigs, that is 1 and 2, back beside the
19 company commander's Pig, and did so, and again we have
20 seen the congregation of Pigs at the end of block 1 in
21 the photographs.
22 Later after he had withdrawn most of his men
23 into their vehicles at the end of block 1 he was
24 ordered by Major Loden to go forward to the barricade
25 and bring back civilian bodies which were lying the
1 other side of it. That was done in his, Lieutenant N's
2 Pig, Pig 1, which was later driven by Sergeant O to
3 Altnagelvin hospital. We will come to that in more
4 detail in relation to sector 3. N is recorded as
5 having fired five shots on this day. Four are
6 accounted for by the evidence to which I have
7 referred. As to the fifth, may we look at transcript,
8 Day 12, page 67 where, at B at the top of the page we
9 will find this question:
10 "Question: Did your rifle work correctly
11 during the whole of this afternoon?
12 Answer: After I had fired my first shot, the
13 feeling I had after the rifle had fired was that it had
14 not recocked itself, so I quickly, using the cocking
15 mechanism, ejected what I assumed must have been an
16 empty case, and quickly fired my second shot. I did
17 not carry out the normal drill of looking in.
18 Question: If it had recocked itself by doing
19 what you did, what effect would that have?
20 Answer: I would have ejected not an empty
21 case, but a live round.
22 Question: Were you aware at that point that
23 you had ejected a live round?
24 Answer: No, sir."
25 There has been produced to the Inquiry a live
1 round which is said to have been found on Bloody
2 Sunday. Whether that is this round I know not, or
3 I know not at the moment.
4 I then come to Lance Corporal V. Lance
5 Corporal V was also in Pig number 1, according to his
6 evidence, and according to that same evidence he heard
7 two explosions which were neither rubber bullets nor
8 rifles just before he de-bussed coming, as he thought,
9 from the Rossville flats area. His evidence was that
10 he cocked his rifle as soon as he de-bussed. Then as
11 he did so and went to the left of the Pig, that is to
12 say in an easterly direction, with S he heard single
13 rifle fire, high velocity shots coming from the
14 alleyway between blocks 1 and 2.
15 If we look at Day 13, page 11 in his
16 transcript, we will see this, the second question after
17 D:
18 "Question: Did you hear anything as you went
19 to that position?" That is going to a position S:
20 "Answer: Yes, I heard single rifle fire.
21 Question: Did you see anything?
22 Answer: Yes, to my right several shots
23 landed and made spurts in the earth.
24 Question: Where was the single rifle fire
25 coming from, so far as you could judge?
1 Answer: So far as I could judge, coming in
2 from there," he indicated.
3 Lord Widgery: Coming from the alleyway
4 between what we have called the numbers 1 and 2
5 blocks?
6 Mr Underhill: Can you tell the Tribunal what
7 calibre of fire that was?
8 Answer: I am sorry, Sir, I cannot.
9 Question: Can you say whether it was high
10 velocity or low velocity?
11 Answer: High velocity, Sir."
12 His evidence was that there were
13 approximately 100 people milling about at the end of
14 William Street. If we go to the next page, Day 12, he
15 was asked after A:
16 "Were they doing anything?
17 Answer: Throwing stones and bricks".
18 Mr Underhill: They were throwing stones and
19 bricks. Did you see anything else thrown?
20 Answer: Yes, later on." And he said he saw
21 various people either stationary or milling about. At
22 C, the second question:
23 "Question: Was your attention drawn to any
24 particular person?
25 Answer: Yes, sir, towards the front of the
1 crowd," by which he meant towards him. The next half
2 of the page, please:
3 "Mr Underhill: This person to whom your
4 attention was drawn - he was in the front of the crowd
5 in regard to you? Can you describe him at all?
6 Answer: Yes, sir: he was wearing a dark
7 suit, a white coloured shirt, he was of medium build
8 and he had long, dark hair.
9 Question: Can you describe to my Lord the
10 position he was in?" And he indicates where he was:
11 "Mr Underhill: What was he doing?
12 Answer: He had his arm in a throwing
13 position." And he demonstrated what the witness was
14 doing.
15 "Mr Underhill: His right arm. Was he holding
16 anything?
17 Answer: Yes, he had a bottle with a fuse
18 attached. The fuse was alight.
19 Question: Which hand was that in?
20 Answer: The right-hand, Sir.
21 Question: Approximately how far away from
22 you?
23 Answer: Approximately 50 to 60 metres.
24 Question: What did you do?
25 Answer: I took aim on this person," the top
1 of the next page:
2 "Question: Was your view of him continuous
3 after you had taken aim?
4 Answer: No, for a fraction of a second
5 someone ran in front and obscured my aim, but as soon
6 as my aim was clear I fired.
7 Question: What happened? So far as you
8 could tell, did your shot strike the man?
9 Answer: My shot struck the man and threw him
10 backwards.
11 Question: Just tell my Lord, between the
12 moment when you took aim and then you say for a
13 fraction of a second your view was obscured, and then
14 you fired, did all that happen in a very short space of
15 time?
16 Answer: A fraction of a second, Sir.
17 Question: Did you hear any explosion after
18 you had fired, or at the time that you fired?
19 Answer: No, sir.
20 Question: What did you think had happened so
21 far as you could tell at that stage? You had fired and
22 hit the man?
23 Answer: I had fired and hit the man. It was
24 afterwards that I realised he had already thrown the
25 bottle during the fraction of a second that he was
1 obscured from me.
2 Question: Did you remain in the same
3 position after that?
4 Answer: No, sir, I moved into the wall
5 behind S.
6 Question: Did you see anybody in the area of
7 where you had shot the man?
8 Answer: Yes, four or five people came back
9 with their hands in the air, and they were waving white
10 handkerchiefs.
11 Question: Did they come near the body of the
12 man you had shot.
13 Answer: Yes, sir".
14 That is as far as we need go in relation to
15 that. On that account he fired at a man who had, in
16 his right arm in a throwing position, a bottle with a
17 lighted fuse and his view was obscured for a fraction
18 of a second as he took aim and he believed that the
19 target had already thrown the bottle during the
20 fraction of a second that he was obscured from view and
21 he hit the target and he fell backwards.
22 If we go to page 20, he was asked this
23 question at G, the second half of the page:
24 "Question: Were there any other soldiers
25 there at that time?
1 Answer: Not that I recall.
2 Question: You fired at him in any event; is
3 that correct?
4 Answer: At the petrol bomber, yes.
5 Question: And you fired to kill, of course?
6 Answer: Yes."
7 The top of the next page:
8 "Question: And your impression now is, or
9 your recollection now is that he had thrown this petrol
10 bomb before you fired at him?
11 Answer: I could not see that at the time,
12 Sir.
13 Question: But that is your reconstruction of
14 the events?
15 Answer: Yes, sir, now.
16 Question: That was a petrol bomb which never
17 exploded?
18 Answer: Yes, sir." At B he was asked this:
19 "Question: Did you look to see where the
20 petrol bomb might have landed?
21 Answer: When I saw that I had shot the
22 fellow with a petrol bomb in his hand I looked to the
23 area where he might have thrown it and saw a fuse still
24 burning on the ground.
25 Question: Did you watch it?
1 Answer: No, sir, as soon as I saw the fuse
2 I turned to go into the wall and cover of the area of
3 the block of Rossville flats.
4 Question: Did you shout a warning or
5 anything like that," and he says no it was
6 impracticable:
7 "Question: It was impracticable to shout a
8 warning to anyone when you saw this thing that was
9 about to explode?
10 Answer: He still had the bomb in his hand."
11 It will be remembered that the Yellow Card
12 does not include in its definition of firearm a petrol
13 bomb and the question therefore arises as to whether,
14 on his own account, N's shot was consistent with the
15 rules which are set out in that card.
16 As we have seen, his evidence was that four
17 or five people then came back towards the man whom he
18 had shot waving white handkerchiefs. If we go to page
19 22 of this transcript, the second half of the page at G
20 we will see that at the last question he was asked
21 this:
22 "Question: When the party of people came to
23 take him away, was one of them a priest in clerical
24 clothes?
25 Answer: I think so, Sir."
1 After he moved into the wall behind Private S
2 who was by the buildings at the end of
3 Chamberlain Street, he saw S, so he said, returning
4 fire into the alleyway between blocks 1 and 2. His
5 evidence was that he saw flashes from that direction,
6 but heard nothing because of the bottling from block 1
7 and the noise that was going on and V's evidence was
8 that he saw S fire about four shots from a standing
9 position.
10 When S had finished firing Lance Corporal V
11 ordered him back to Pig 1 and he, V, went to
12 Sergeant O's Pig, Pig 2, where he was ordered to pull
13 his men back to his Pig, which he had in fact already
14 done. Sergeant O then told V to get into O's Pig after
15 it had moved back behind block 1 and there was then an
16 ammunition check. Before he withdrew there were some
17 high velocity shots coming from the end of
18 Rossville Street.
19 If we look at P1, page 28 we will see the
20 photograph upon which he marked the trajectory of his
21 shot. You will see that he places himself in this
22 photograph at to the south of the wire fence that
23 divides the wasteground from the car park. The target,
24 if the end of this line is intended to represent the
25 target, as being just to the east of the back wall of
1 number 36 because the wall of Chamberlain -- the back
2 wall of the Chamberlain Street houses is where I have
3 marked it in an arrow. There is a garden or a yard at
4 the back of those houses.
5 LORD SAVILLE: Just to the west, I think --
6 MR CLARKE: Did I say to the east, I should
7 have said the west, that was simply my mistake.
8 If you look at Q7 on the trajectory chart V,
9 the relevant appears somewhat further south of the
10 fence between the wasteland and the car park and his
11 target appears further into the car park than is the
12 position on the photograph. May we look at P128
13 again? There, as you can see, the target is less far
14 into the car park than appears on the chart.
15 I should utter a word of caution in relation
16 to the chart, the chart was in the Widgery papers and
17 was presumably derived, and in most cases appears to
18 have been derived, from the evidence of the soldiers.
19 But the documents to which they spoke in evidence are
20 those on the photograph that we are looking at.
21 The line of the trajectory shown in the
22 photograph which we are presently looking, when
23 extended, if you extend this line that I had drawn
24 approximately in the line of the trajectory shown on
25 the photograph, the spot at which you land is very
1 close, as we shall shortly see, to the spot where Jack
2 Duddy's body came to lie which is approximately in the
3 middle of the blue rectangle that I have drawn, which
4 is between the two sets of car park markings in the
5 Rossville Street flats car park. But Jack Duddy was a
6 boy of 17. He was not wearing a suit or a white
7 coloured shirt. He was wearing jeans and a dark jacket
8 and a bright red shirt. We can see that from a
9 photograph, which please do not put on the screen,
10 whose number is P2.29.
11 As we can see from the photograph, V appears
12 to describe the place where his shot hit as less far
13 into the car park than where Duddy lay which may give
14 some support to the possibility that Jack Duddy was
15 shot by V's bullet, intended for another person at the
16 end of Chamberlain Street.
17 We need now to look at report number 2, V
18 page 6, where my learned friend Mr Grierson has
19 identified, as have others, an inconsistency of a
20 material character in the evidence of Lance Corporal V
21 on the issue, identified at paragraph 6 as to whether
22 or not Lance Corporal V knew that his target had
23 already thrown his bomb when he fired at him.
24 In his statement to the Royal Military Police
25 just at nearly half past midnight on 31st January, he
1 is recorded as saying this:
2 "I then saw a male person ... I saw him throw
3 a bottle with a fuse attached at the end. It hit the
4 ground but did not explode. He moved from the crowd.
5 I fired one 7.62 millimetre round, aimed at him," i.e.
6 on that account, as I read it, he fired after the
7 petrol bomb had hit the ground.
8 If you look at his statement for the purposes
9 of the Widgery Inquiry, his SA statement, he says this:
10 "I took aim at this man but my view of him
11 was obscured for a fraction of a second, probably by
12 someone running in front of him. I kept my sights on
13 this man and fired immediately I had a clear aim ...
14 I then realised that he had thrown the bomb before
15 I had shot him ... in the eighth paragraph of my RMP
16 statement," pausing there what appears in the second
17 column is the eighth paragraph:
18 "In the eighth paragraph of my RMP statement,
19 the sequence of events given in this statement is
20 incorrect but I am satisfied that my description of
21 events in my present statement is correct."
22 In his testimony to Lord Widgery, as we have
23 already in part seen, he said this:
24 "He had his arm in a throwing position ... he
25 had a bottle with a fuse attached ... I took aim on
1 this person ... for a fraction of a second someone ran
2 in front and obscured my aim, but as soon as my aim was
3 clear I fired ... it was afterwards that I realised he
4 had already thrown the bottle during the fraction of a
5 second that he was obscured from me." At a later
6 stage:
7 "When I saw that I had shot the fellow with a
8 petrol bomb in his hand I looked to the area where he
9 might have thrown it ..."
10 Professor Walsh has commented on this. In
11 his RMP statement V said that he saw a person throw a
12 bottle ... the bottle hit the ground ... V then fired
13 one shot at him. On the basis of this statement there
14 are grounds for charging V with murder or attempted
15 murder ... it is highly significant, therefore, that
16 the version given in evidence had changed
17 substantially. In evidence he claimed to have fired as
18 the bomber was about to throw".
19 My learned friend Mr Grierson has simply
20 referred to the obvious inconsistency in the last
21 column of the document. We need to compare the
22 sequence of events that led to the acknowledged
23 difference between what appears in the RMP statement
24 and what appears in the SA statement. For that purpose
25 we need to look at temporary statement bundle -- can we
1 perhaps have a look at B82.002. Can we have temporary
2 statement bundle 16.14? Can we have a short pause
3 while somebody scans this, I simply cannot do without
4 this document?
5 LORD SAVILLE: It is an important document.
6 MR CLARKE: It is an important document, it
7 must be shown in public.
8 LORD SAVILLE: I think we had better rise
9 until it is scanned in.
10 (11.35) pm).
11 A short adjournment.
12 (11.47 pm).
13 MR CLARKE: Could we have temporary statement
14 bundle 31.7? This is a file note which was made, as
15 appears from the manuscript at the bottom right-hand
16 corner of what appears on the screen, on 5th March 1972
17 by Mr John Heritage who was one of the Treasury
18 Solicitors' staff taking statements for the purposes of
19 the Inquiry. What it reads -- it is a bit difficult to
20 read the beginning, but I will take it slowly -- is
21 this:
22 "In the course of my preliminary interview
23 with," and it is V] -- "in the course of my preliminary
24 interview with V, before recording his statement
25 I invited him to tell me his account of what happened.
1 He told me that he saw a man throw a bottle with a
2 lighted fuse at its end. The bottle landed near S, but
3 the fuse came out in the air and the bottle did not
4 explode. He said he kept an eye on the man who had
5 thrown it as he moved back in the crowd. As soon as
6 the movement of the crowd gave him a clear sight of the
7 man, he shot at him and believed that he had hit him.
8 In answer to," Inquiry 1385 is a member of the Army
9 legal team --"in answer to Inquiry 1385 he said he
10 thought the man might have been stooping just before he
11 shot. I asked him if he could see anything in the
12 man's hand. He replied, 'no, sir, I cannot honestly
13 say that I did'. Inquiry 1385 then intervened and said
14 he wished to discuss the position of this witness with
15 Inquiry 1537 before we proceeded."
16 Inquiry 1537 has been unnecessarily
17 anonymised, Inquiry 1537 is Colonel Overbury.
18 That reads: "Inquiry 1385 then intervened
19 and said he wished to discuss the position of this
20 witness with Colonel Overbury before we proceeded.
21 I agreed. Colonel Overbury requested that this
22 interview with V be held over until he had had an
23 opportunity to discuss the matter with counsel.
24 I agreed."
25 That is the first note on the page. Another
1 note on the same day, also from Mr Heritage reads as
2 follows:
3 "Inquiry 1385 confirms that this is a fair
4 and accurate record of what V said in our presence."
5 At the bottom of the page, also in
6 Mr Heritage's handwriting and also dated, if you take
7 it from me at the moment, as appears clearly in the
8 manuscript hard copy, 5th March, appear the following
9 words:
10 "After discussing the matter with Mr Gibbens,
11 Colonel Overbury told me that he proposed to order V to
12 make a statement. I, Mr Heritage, said that if V made
13 a statement then I would record it, but before doing so
14 I would warn V that his evidence might incriminate
15 him. Colonel Overbury said that if such a warning were
16 to be given he would order/advise V not to make a
17 statement."
18 If we may have, then, the previous page,
19 temporary statement 31.006, this is the covering page
20 to which that which I have previously referred is
21 attached in the papers. It is difficult to read but
22 what it says at the top is "confidential. Mr Hall to
23 see," and I take that to mean that Mr Heritage had
24 shown the note that we have just looked at to Mr Hall,
25 as he then was, who was Sir Basil Hall as he now is,
1 who was in charge of the Treasury Solicitors' operation
2 for the purposes of the Widgery Inquiry. Then
3 Mr Shepherd -- and one sees his initials "BH" for Basil
4 Hall on the right. Then Mr Shepherd "please file". In
5 other words Mr Heritage was, not surprisingly, showing
6 the memorandum to Mr Hall and then causing it to be
7 filed.
8 The bottom half of the memorandum reads the
9 following:
10 "Mr Stocker discussed with Mr Gibbens",
11 Mr Stocker counsel to the Widgery Tribunal:
12 "Discussed with Mr Gibbens, statement to be
13 taken without further warning."
14 So this memorandum shows the following
15 sequence: V says that he shot the man after the petrol
16 bomb had landed but not exploded; Colonel Overbury asks
17 for the statement taking to be held over in order for
18 him to consult counsel; he then returns and says that
19 he proposes to order V to make a statement; Mr Heritage
20 says that in that event he will give the soldier a
21 warning against self-incrimination and record what he
22 says; Colonel Overbury says in that event he will order
23 or advise V not to give a statement.
24 The question is then discussed between
25 Mr Gibbens and Mr Stocker and the result is that which
1 is recorded on the page we are looking at "statement to
2 be taken without further warning". It looks, though we
3 can no longer ask either Mr Stocker or Mr Gibbens, as
4 if both were satisfied that any further statement would
5 not incriminate because the soldiers had been ordered
6 to give evidence. That was the convention on which the
7 statement taking took place, and probably accurate as a
8 matter of law. I infer that Colonel Overbury's
9 statement that he would advise Soldier V not to sign if
10 Mr Heritage acted as proposed, that is to say give a
11 warning against self-incrimination and record his
12 statement thereafter. I imagine that Colonel
13 Overbury's statement that in that event he would advise
14 V not to sign arose because Mr Heritage appeared to be
15 thinking that a warning against self-incrimination was
16 appropriate, even if Soldier V was ordered to sign.
17 The logical basis for doing that would be: if an answer
18 given could incriminate, even if a soldier concerned
19 had been ordered to sign and if that was correct it
20 might be better for the soldier not to say anything at
21 all.
22 What appears in the statement -- in the
23 memorandum we are looking at accords with the
24 recollection of Mr Heritage. May we have temporary
25 statement bundle 6. Temporary statement bundle 6.9.
1 At paragraph 21, Mr Heritage in his statement to this
2 Tribunal says:
3 "I have been asked about my recollections of
4 my preliminary interview with Soldier V and subsequent
5 discussions which are recorded in my three file notes
6 of 5th March 1972. A copy of those is attached to this
7 statement.
8 "I confirm that my file notes are, to the
9 best of my belief true and correct.
10 "22: I remember that during the course of my
11 initial discussions with Soldier V, I invited him to
12 tell me his account of what had occurred on Bloody
13 Sunday. Soon after he began telling me his account, he
14 replied to a question I asked in a way that appeared to
15 me would incriminate him. I clearly recall this
16 incident, as it is the only occasion in my career when
17 I have had to consider the possibility of giving a
18 warning to a witness that his evidence might
19 incriminate him.
20 "23: I recall that Lieutenant Colonel
21 Overbury and I had a disagreement over whether or not a
22 warning should be given to Soldier V that he might
23 incriminate himself. In retrospect, I believe this was
24 based on a misunderstanding. I now know from the
25 present Inquiry's ruling on claims for professional
1 privilege, and Mr Hall's note to the Treasury Solicitor
2 of 16th March 1972, paragraph 7 (which at the time
3 I would not have seen) that the Army team were acting
4 on advice that a statement made in compliance with
5 military orders could not be used against its maker in
6 subsequent proceedings. At the time I do not believe
7 that I was aware of this and I simply did not
8 understand Lieutenant Colonel Overbury's approach. It
9 seemed to me then that as the Inquiry had statutory
10 powers of compulsion of witnesses and was given the
11 powers of the High Court, any military order to give a
12 statement would be redundant for the same reason, any
13 such order not to give a statement could be regarded as
14 a contempt of the Tribunal.
15 "24: As can be seen from the covering note
16 I referred this matter to Basil Hall, the solicitor to
17 the Inquiry. As Lieutenant Colonel Overbury and myself
18 were not able to agree on the course of action that
19 should be taken, I had no further involvement in
20 recording Soldier V's evidence from that time onwards.
21 I am unsure who took the final statement from Soldier V
22 but, by process of elimination, it is likely to have
23 been Chris Leonard or MR Hirst.
24 "25: I did not discuss this matter with
25 Mr Hall or with counsel and I do not know whether or
1 not Lord Widgery was ever informed of it."
2 May we then go back to the report number 2,
3 Soldier V, page 1, -- I think we can go to item 2 for
4 the present purposes, can we go to page 2 where my
5 learned friend Mr Grierson has identified a
6 discrepancy, but with much less significant effect, on
7 the issue as to the type of missiles which Lance
8 Corporal V saw or heard being thrown by the crowd when
9 he de-bussed from his Pig but before his attention was
10 drawn to the target. In his statement to the Royal
11 Military Police he said:
12 "As I de-bussed I heard the sound of shots.
13 I cocked my weapon. I heard two explosions. Rioters
14 also threw petrol and acid bombs."
15 In his statement to the Treasury Solicitor,
16 the SA statement, he said this:
17 "There was a large crowd on the left in front
18 of me around the end of Chamberlain Street who were
19 throwing stones and bottles and there were bottles
20 being thrown from the block of flats on my right which
21 contained liquid."
22 In my RMP statement I state rioters also
23 threw petrol and acid bombs. I should like to make
24 clear that at the time I was describing no petrol bombs
25 were being thrown".
1 In his oral testimony he was asked this:
2 "Question: Were they doing anything," what
3 that meant was were the crowd near the end of
4 Chamberlain Street doing anything.
5 "Answer: Throwing stones and bricks.
6 Mr Underhill: They were throwing stones and
7 bricks. Did you see anything else thrown?
8 Answer: Yes, later on." My learned friend
9 points out in his conclusions:
10 "There is a discrepancy here between Lance
11 Corporal V's RMP statement where he said there were
12 petrol and acid bombs. His SA statement where he said
13 there were stones and bottles, but no petrol bombs and
14 his oral testimony where he referred only to stones and
15 bricks."
16 May we then have temporary statement bundle
17 31.1, which is Soldier V's statement to this Tribunal.
18 I think I can pick it up at paragraph 2.2.3 in order to
19 get the context.
20 "I remember as I got out of the Pig noticing
21 a person in an uniform and a respirator. My immediate
22 thought was that the guys here were extremely well
23 organised. I had never before or since seen civilians
24 with respirators and uniforms. Because I ran at the man
25 and pinned him against the wall with my rifle. As I did
1 so I could hear him calling out something along the
2 lines of 'Knight of Malta or medic, first aider' I no
3 longer remember exactly what he said, however, it was
4 sufficient for me to realise that he was not a
5 threat."
6 Then he refers to certain photographs showing
7 two soldiers walking away from a Knight of Malta both
8 wearing helmets and respirators and carrying rifles.
9 "I have identified that these soldiers were
10 paratroopers because of their round helmets. The wall
11 against the Knight of Malta is lying could be the wall
12 against which I pushed the Knight of Malta who I saw
13 when I first jumped out of the Pig. However I do not
14 recognise any of these pictures or the soldiers in them
15 and I could not recognise this Knight of Malta as the
16 one I pinned to the wall with my rifle. My next memory
17 is hearing a burst of machine gunfire and seeing
18 bullets hitting a wall between me and a soldier who was
19 in front of me. It was definitely machine gunfire
20 I heard and because it hit the wall on my left,
21 I believe it came from the area of the Rossville
22 flats. It was enemy fire directed at me personally.
23 I do not remember how many shots I heard or how many
24 hit the wall. However, hearing the shots confirmed to
25 me that this was not a straightforward arrest operation
1 but a situation in which I may need to fire my rifle.
2 "2.5. I then recall my sight picture.
3 I clearly remember that the front foresight came
4 perfect into the middle of the rear aperture and the
5 central mass of the target was in the centre of the
6 sight. I could see in my rifle sight a white shirt.
7 "2.6. I fired a shot but I no longer
8 actually recall the act of firing. I have a very vague
9 recollection of a fence post and it may be that on this
10 occasion I was braced against a fence post or I could
11 be confusing this with another incident.
12 "2.7. I remember that the target was thrown
13 backwards by the speed of the impact of the bullet.
14 "2.8. I have a recollection of lots of
15 debris and missiles being thrown down from the high
16 rise flats which were to my right as I looked into the
17 car park. I recall that there was a Pig which was
18 parked on the forecourt and the missiles were being
19 thrown at the Pig.
20 "2.9. I recall making my way over to
21 Soldier O's Pig. He told me to pull my men back and
22 I told him that I had already done that. Whilst I was
23 speaking to Soldier O I saw something moving in a high
24 position away from the flats. This may have been part
25 of the city wall. I pointed it out to Soldier O and
1 asked if he had any binoculars. I remember that
2 Soldier O told me he had already identified it as a Hat
3 OP, that means a soldier from a different Regiment in
4 an observation position. This is the extent of my
5 memory and of the events of Bloody Sunday."
6 Go back to the top of the page, the account
7 that is given in 2.5 and 2.6, that is a recollection of
8 nothing more than seeing the front foresight in line
9 with the rear aperture and the central mass of the
10 target in the sight and does not deal in any way with
11 the circumstances in which Soldier V came to fire.
12 Control wise see the previous page, 001, the
13 reference at the bottom of the page to "machine
14 gunfire" fired at him directly and bullets hitting the
15 wall between him and the soldier who was in front of me
16 is not something that appears in any of the statements
17 given in 1972. So that is the position in relation to
18 Lance Corporal V. If the account given in the RMP
19 statement and to Mr Heritage is accurate, the Tribunal
20 may feel that the firing was not justified either by
21 the Yellow Card or at all.
22 Sir, I wonder whether that would be
23 a convenient moment?
24 LORD SAVILLE: 1.00, please.
25 (12.10 pm)
1 (The luncheon adjournment)
2 (1.00 pm)
3 LORD SAVILLE: Yes.
4 MR CLARKE: Could we have temporary statement
5 31.2? This is Lance Corporal V. I should have
6 mentioned, could we have the second half of the
7 document, that in paragraph 3 of his statement he says:
8 "I have been shown a statement which I am
9 told is a copy of the statement I made to the Royal
10 Military Police on 31st January 1927. I remember being
11 interviewed by the RMP. It was late at night and I was
12 in some form of old factory. I do not recall the
13 detail of what happened but I do remember that the RMP
14 took me through a series of questions from which he
15 then drafted my statement for me. I have seen
16 a manuscript statement which is not in my handwriting.
17 I assume it is as written by the RMP. I confirm it is
18 my signature.
19 "4. I have been shown a copy of a note in
20 which a soldier identified as V is interviewed. This
21 is attached as appendix 4."
22 That is the note by Mr Heritage:
23 "I have no recollection of this interview
24 taking place. The first time that I saw this note was
25 after the commencement of the Saville Inquiry:"
1 The last sentence is not surprising.
2 May I then come to Soldier Q. Q was also in
3 the first Pig in an arrest group of three, two of whom
4 had self-loading rifles and one of whom, Private 112,
5 had a baton gun, that is Widgery 112. Q had
6 previously, according to his evidence, been keeping
7 watch on the roof of the GPO sorting office with
8 another soldier, it may be 112, until he had been
9 ordered back by the Platoon Corporal to the
10 Presbyterian church after youths started stoning them.
11 He described in his evidence how, after he
12 arrived, his group of three were stoned by people in
13 the forecourt of the Rossville flats who would stop,
14 throw stones and then move again. Because the stoning
15 was heavy, he and Private 112 took cover at the north
16 end of block 1. He then, he said, heard four or five
17 low velocity shots. If we look at Day 12, page 94A,
18 the matter was picked up in cross-examination and he
19 was asked this:
20 "Are you now telling the Tribunal that there
21 was firing after 45 seconds to a minute of getting out
22 of your vehicle?
23 Answer: Yes.
24 Question: That was high velocity fire?
25 Answer: No, low velocity.
1 Question: Was that the three rounds you
2 referred to?
3 Answer: Four or five rounds.
4 Question: You do not know where it came
5 from?
6 Answer: No.
7 Question: Or who it was directed at?
8 Answer: No.
9 Question: It was just something you heard?
10 Answer: Yes."
11 Private 112 also describes hearing low
12 velocity fire. That one gets by looking at B1730, the
13 second half of the page. He says this about halfway
14 down the page:
15 "About 1610 hours I was deployed on the
16 wasteground off Rossville Street. From this position
17 I could hear shots being fired which were coming from
18 the area of the flats. These shots I would say was of
19 low velocity, Thompson submachine gun. At the same
20 time rioting was in progress on the wasteground off
21 Pilot Row and I heard shots passing over my head, again
22 these shots were low velocity and came from the
23 direction of Rossville flats, the exact position I do
24 not know as everything happened so fast.
25 "I then took up a position further south at
1 the corner of block 1 of the Rossville flats and fired
2 a number of baton rounds to disperse rioting persons."
3 Go back to Soldier Q, as I do. He said that
4 having got to the north of block 1 he kept observation
5 for a period on the west side, that is to say on the
6 Rossville Street side, where he saw about 70 or 80
7 people fairly widely scattered on both sides of the
8 barricades stoning the troops. That number is
9 consistent with the sort of numbers of people at the
10 barricade who we see in the photographs that we saw
11 yesterday.
12 Next he went to the east side of block 1
13 where people in the forecourt of the flats were stoning
14 the APC at the entrance, presumably Sergeant O's Pig
15 and the soldiers behind it and he said that bottles
16 were coming down from the flats and the liquid in them
17 smelt like acid and one soldier had acid on his
18 trousers.
19 May we then go back to Day 12, page 88
20 because what he then said was this, at A, the last
21 question:
22 "Question: Was your attention drawn to any
23 particular person?
24 Answer: Yes, sir.
25 Question: Where was this particular person
1 who attracted your attention?
2 Answer: He was in the junction of the two
3 blocks of flats.
4 Question: What was he doing?
5 Answer: He was throwing objects, sir."
6 The next question but one, Mr Underhill asks
7 him:
8 "He was staying in one place, or was he
9 moving?
10 Answer: He was going round the back of the
11 flats and then coming back and throwing and then going
12 back again."
13 He was asked to point out where it was and he
14 pointed to a corner. As we shall see in due course, he
15 was referring to the junction of blocks 2 and 3. He
16 was then asked this:
17 "Could you tell what that man who you saw was
18 throwing the objects at?
19 Answer: He was throwing them in the
20 direction of the troops.
21 Question: Which troops do you mean?"
22 Then he indicates where, it is impossible to
23 tell from the transcript.
24 "Question: Can you tell us anything about
25 the shape and size of the objects?
1 Answer: They were dark coloured, round, as
2 large as his fist.
3 Question: What did you think they were?
4 Answer: Nailbombs, sir."
5 He then says at F:
6 "Question: Did you see any of these objects
7 land?
8 Answer: Yes, sir.
9 Question: When he threw them?
10 Answer: Yes.
11 Question: What did they do?
12 Answer: Well, he threw two or three and they
13 just rolled and then he threw another one and it
14 exploded.
15 Question: Can you tell us where it was when
16 it exploded?
17 Answer: It was in these houses back on
18 Chamberlain Street, round this area, sir.
19 Question: Did you know whether anybody was
20 hit by that explosion?
21 Answer: Not soldiers, sir.
22 Question: What did you do when you saw that
23 man throwing those objects and the one that exploded?
24 What did you do?
25 Answer: I just watched him, sir.
1 Question: Eventually did you do something?
2 Answer: Yes. He came round the corner with
3 another one and I shot him, sir.
4 Question: What position were you in when you
5 shot at him?
6 Answer: In a kneeling position."
7 Then he gave a description of the man as
8 being of:
9 "... medium height, with a black windcheater
10 on and he had got brown hair.
11 Question: The moment when you shot him, you
12 got him in the sights of your rifle and shot him, do
13 you know what he was actually doing?
14 Answer: He was in the fact of throwing the
15 bomb, sir.
16 Question: What happened about that shot, did
17 it hit him?
18 Answer: Yes, sir.
19 Question: What happened to him?
20 Answer: He fell, sir.
21 Question: Did his body remain where it
22 fell?
23 Answer: No, sir, he was dragged behind the
24 buildings by another person.
25 A question or two on:
1 "Question: You said he was in the act of
2 throwing when you shot him. Did you see what happened
3 to the bomb?
4 Answer: He dropped it, sir, and it rolled
5 away.
6 Question: As far as you know, did it
7 explode?
8 Answer: No, sir.
9 Question: After you had fired that shot, for
10 how long did you remain in that position?
11 Answer: Four or five minutes, sir.
12 Question: After four or five minutes what
13 did you do?
14 Answer: I moved to the centre of the
15 northern end of the block of flats behind the
16 stairway."
17 He said that he stayed there for another five
18 minutes and then climbed into a Pig, which is
19 a different one from the one in which he came and
20 whilst he was there some 30 or 40 people came out of an
21 alleyway on the other side of Rossville Street and
22 started jeering and a soldier fired baton rounds which
23 dispersed them.
24 At Day 12, page 94, at the top of the page at
25 item B, the second question:
1 "Question: So far as shooting directed at
2 you was concerned, there was no shooting directed at
3 you until some time later?
4 Answer: I never heard any shots fired at me
5 at all, sir."
6 At the top of the next page, 95A, he was
7 asked this:
8 "Question: I want to know how long you were
9 there altogether in point of time.
10 Answer: I should imagine about half an hour,
11 sir.
12 Question: During the whole of the period you
13 were there, there were a number of other men who were
14 in that vehicle also operating about that area?
15 Answer: Yes.
16 Question: You were not conscious of any
17 firing directed at you or them during that period?
18 Answer: No, sir."
19 If we look at P1.23, we will see the line of
20 fire described by him on a photograph relating to him.
21 Unfortunately they have chosen a photograph in shadow,
22 but what that illustrates is that he was, as his
23 evidence indicates, at the north of block 1 and it is
24 very difficult to see, but the line does in fact pass
25 to the gap between blocks 2 and 3 across the
1 Rossville Street car park. One can actually see it on
2 the hard copy rather better. There are no
3 inconsistencies between his RMP statements and his
4 Widgery statements. I had better in fact show you
5 a report number 2, Soldier Q, page 1, not for the
6 purpose of pointing out any consistency, but pointing
7 out that a supposed inconsistency is not an
8 inconsistency.
9 In Professor Walsh's report he comments as
10 follows, see the penultimate column:
11 "In his original statement Q claimed that the
12 person whom he shot was throwing nailbombs at soldiers
13 taking cover at a military vehicle about 50 yards from
14 the corner of block 1. In evidence, however, he said
15 that the person was throwing the bombs at soldiers at
16 the entrance to Chamberlain Street ... no explanation
17 was given for the discrepancy."
18 If you look at the original statement, the
19 second column, it says as follows:
20 "I observed, towards the junction of the two
21 blocks to the southeast of my position ... I was about
22 100 metres from the corner of the two blocks. There
23 were other soldiers behind a halted APC and these men
24 were about 50 yards or less from the corner ...
25 nailbombs ... were being thrown so as to land near to
1 the halted APC where troops were sheltering."
2 In his evidence, as we have seen, see the
3 second answer in the fourth column, he said that the
4 man was throwing the bombs in the direction of the
5 troops and that the bomb exploded near the houses at
6 the back of Chamberlain Street. Looking at the RMP
7 statement enables us to identify what he was referring
8 to in his oral testimony, namely that the man was
9 throwing in the direction of the troops round
10 Soldier O's Pig. The observation that is made in the
11 last paragraph is the following:
12 "There is no inconsistency here: the
13 'buildings at the end of Chamberlain Street' are in
14 fact about 50 yards from the gap between blocks 2 and
15 3" so that when he said, in the first statement, "I was
16 about 100 metres from the corner of the two blocks",
17 that is between the north of block 1 and the junction
18 between blocks 2 and block 3 and when he said there
19 were other soldiers behind a halted APC and these were
20 about 50 yards or less from the corner", they were 50
21 yards or less from the gap between blocks 2 and 3. So
22 I do not think that there is in fact, apart from
23 Professor Walsh, any inconsistency of the type which he
24 detected.
25 May we have B657.1. This is Soldier Q's
1 statement to this Tribunal, which is broadly consistent
2 with the evidence that he gave to Lord Widgery and, as
3 he says in paragraph 1, the first line:
4 "The best evidence I can give of my record of
5 the events of Bloody Sunday is by referring to the
6 transcript of my evidence before Lord Widgery. That
7 evidence was given when matters were fresh in my mind,
8 which is no longer the case, indeed I have forgotten
9 much of the detail. Whilst I have fully cooperated
10 with Eversheds, the best evidence I can give is to
11 refer to my Widgery transcript."
12 There are, however, some points in his new
13 statement that are worth noting. In this statement he
14 says that he came under fire when he de-bussed from
15 Lieutenant N's APC and before he moved over to the
16 north end of block 1. If one goes to 657.3, he says at
17 paragraph 17:
18 "When I jumped out of the Pig, I found that
19 I was on a piece of wasteground. Looking at the map,
20 I presume we came in from the north. My Pig parked in
21 the position indicated by the X on the map. There was
22 another Pig parked in the area circled on the map.
23 I saw people running ahead; moving all over. I would
24 be guessing if I said how many there were but my
25 impression is that there were lots."
1 Then he says at 18, after referring to people
2 stopping and picking up stones:
3 "I could hear the crack and thump of incoming
4 fire coming over my head. I think there were a couple
5 of incoming rounds. I have been asked how I can be
6 sure that what I heard was incoming rounds and not one
7 of my colleagues firing. You can generally recognise
8 incoming fire because you can hear the crack and thump
9 and the direction is audible, you hear the bullet
10 coming."
11 That is presumably a reference to high
12 velocity shots and, indeed, if you go to paragraph 29
13 which is at page 657.5, he says in terms at the top of
14 the page, paragraph 29:
15 "Before I shot the bomber, I had heard a
16 mixture of high and low velocity incoming fire.
17 I cannot remember having heard any soldiers shooting,
18 nor seeing anyone else fall as if shot or anyone with
19 a gunshot wound. I cannot remember what else was going
20 on. I was focused on what I was doing. After I shot
21 the bomber, I looked away from the gap and carried on
22 doing my job. I was looking out for 112 but I cannot
23 remember where he was or what he was doing at that
24 time."
25 I mention this by way of contrast to his
1 Widgery evidence in which he spoke of being stoned when
2 he de-bussed and of coming under low velocity fire
3 after he had moved to the north end of block 1.
4 If you go to 657.4, at paragraph 20, he says,
5 in relation to his target, about halfway down paragraph
6 20:
7 "As I caught sight of him, he threw something
8 with his right hand. I cannot remember what action he
9 used. He threw a bomb. I knew it was a bomb because
10 it went off. He had not thrown the bomb very far and
11 it landed somewhere between me and him."
12 By contrast his evidence to Lord Widgery was
13 that the first two or three bombs thrown by the man in
14 question just rolled away and it was a subsequent one
15 which exploded, but he may have conflated the series in
16 his recollection.
17 I come now to Private S. Private S was the
18 driver/guard of Pig 1. He recalled the Pig being
19 bombarded by bricks and stones and said that as they
20 all got out of the Pig, they came under fire within
21 a matter of seconds and that he cocked his weapon as
22 soon as he came under fire. He described the fire as
23 single shots repeated fairly rapidly, coming from, as
24 he thought, the area of the flats. One gets that from
25 Day 13, page 5 of the Widgery transcript, where at the
1 second question after A, he is asked this:
2 "Question: Of those nine" the nine people in
3 the vehicle "can you remember whether you were first
4 out or whether you were last out?
5 Answer: It was more or less sort of
6 everybody out together, more or less simultaneous
7 de-bussing.
8 Question: Did you then immediately come
9 under fire?
10 Answer: I did, sir. We did, sir."
11 Can we have the second half of the document,
12 above D:
13 "Question: You came under fire, according to
14 your evidence, very quickly after de-bussing?
15 Answer: Yes.
16 Question: Could it have been a matter of
17 minutes after you de-bussed?
18 Answer: No, sir, I would say more or less
19 a matter of seconds.
20 Question: It could not have been several
21 minutes then?
22 Answer: No, I would not have thought so."
23 At the bottom of the page:
24 "Question: And all the men in that vehicle
25 came under fire?
1 Answer: I would say all the men. The Pig in
2 fact came under fire."
3 Over the page at C, he was asked this:
4 "Question: The fire which you heard was high
5 velocity fire?
6 Answer: Medium velocity, sir.
7 Question: Single shots?
8 Answer: Single repetition, fast."
9 Then he says that he took cover by running in
10 a zig-zagged fashion to the back of the houses in
11 Chamberlain Street, that is to say to the east.
12 After a short while, according to his
13 evidence, he saw a gunman in a kneeling position
14 between blocks 1 and 2 facing towards the soldiers.
15 The substance of his evidence is that he had seen
16 a hail of bottles coming down towards Sergeant O's Pig
17 and had heard more or less distant bangs which could
18 have been rifles or bombs and counted four shots pass
19 closely behind him, apparently from a weapon of medium
20 calibre.
21 If one then goes to Day 12, page 103, one
22 finds that account, the second half of the page at D,
23 just above D:
24 "Question: You have told us that you saw
25 missiles range down and so on?
1 Answer: Yes.
2 Question: Did you hear any more firing at
3 that time?
4 Answer: Yes, I was observing to the
5 forecourt of the flats and I saw a man in a kneeling
6 position.
7 Question: Before we get to him: you saw
8 a man in a kneeling position, but were there other
9 people about as well?
10 Answer: There were, yes."
11 Then he describes the fact that the man was
12 in a gap which we shall discover is the gap between
13 blocks 1 and 2:
14 "Question: Which way was he looking?
15 Answer: He was facing towards our men.
16 Question: Did you hear anything?
17 Answer: Yes.
18 Question: What did you hear?
19 Answer: I heard, I counted four shots.
20 Question: Did you know where those shots
21 struck?
22 Answer: The shots passed me, the rounds
23 passed me and went on past me, must have struck
24 somewhere to my rear."
25 Then at the third question under F, he was
1 asked this:
2 "Question: Could you tell or form any view
3 about what sort of weapon was firing?
4 Answer: I would say a medium calibre, an M1;
5 it could have been an M16."
6 He says that he could not see any muzzle
7 flashes and then, at the last question but one on the
8 page:
9 "Question: At that stage could you tell for
10 sure from whom the shots were coming?
11 Answer: I knew the direction the shots were
12 coming.
13 Question: Did you keep watching towards that
14 kneeling man?
15 Answer: I did."
16 Over the page I can take it up at B, the
17 second question:
18 "What action did you take?
19 Answer: As soon as I saw him, as soon as
20 I identified him as the gunman, I fired three aimed
21 shots at him.
22 Question: As far as you could tell, did any
23 of those shots hit him?
24 Answer: As far as I could tell personally,
25 I did not think so at the time. They may have hit
1 him. I would not have said so at the time.
2 Question: You fired the three shots. Did he
3 remain in your view after that?
4 Answer: No, he did not.
5 Question: What prevented your seeing him?
6 Answer: Some people came out into my line of
7 sight.
8 Question: Did you catch sight of him again?
9 Answer: I did, yes.
10 Question: About how long after firing those
11 first three shots?
12 Answer: 30 to 40 seconds, maybe.
13 Question: Was he still in the same position
14 as he had been in before?
15 Answer: He was in the same corner, roughly
16 in the same position.
17 Question: When you caught sight of him again
18 what position was he in now - was he standing up?
19 Answer: He was still in a sort of kneeling
20 crouched position.
21 Question: Which way was he facing?
22 Answer: He was facing towards me."
23 Two questions later:
24 "Question: What did you hear?
25 Answer: I heard him fire.
1 Question: This time did you see anything?
2 Answer: I saw his muzzle flash that time.
3 Question: If you do not know say so: do you
4 know how many separate muzzle flashes you saw?"
5 He obviously did not know:
6 "Question: What did you do?
7 Answer: I was watching that corner all the
8 time, I was waiting for him more or less, so I fired
9 three aimed shots at him.
10 Lord Widgery: Three more, six altogether?
11 Answer: Yes.
12 Mr Underhill: Do you know whether any of
13 those hit him?
14 Answer: The second time I think I did hit
15 him; I think I got him the second time.
16 Question: Were you able to fire any more?
17 Answer: No.
18 Question: Why was that?
19 Answer: Because my line of sight was
20 obstructed.
21 Question: By?
22 Answer: People.
23 Question: At that time, leaving aside the
24 soldiers, were there many people about in the car
25 park?
1 Answer: There were quite a few.
2 Question: Which way were they going?
3 Answer: They were milling about; they were
4 more or less going through the gaps of the flats."
5 If you go to Day 13, page 2, the second
6 question:
7 "Question: Did you see a gunman in that
8 position again?
9 Answer: Yes, sir.
10 Question: Did you see him there again once
11 or more than once?
12 Answer: Twice.
13 Question: Are you able to say that it was
14 the same man who you had seen and fired at before?
15 Answer: I could not say that, sir.
16 Question: You say you saw a gunman. Come to
17 the third time. The third time you saw him did he do
18 anything?
19 Answer: Yes, sir.
20 Question: What did he do?
21 Answer: He fired several rounds in my
22 direction."
23 Then he says that it may be three or four:
24 "Question: Did you fire back?
25 Answer: I did, sir, yes.
1 Question: How many rounds did you fire in
2 reply?
3 Answer: I fired three shots, sir.
4 Question: As far as you can tell, did any of
5 those hit him?
6 Answer: I thought I missed him the third
7 time.
8 Question: Then he fired at you twice more,
9 so we will come to the fourth occasion. How many shots
10 did he fire on the fourth occasion?
11 Answer: Three or four.
12 Question: Those three or four shots, do you
13 know where they went?
14 Answer: Yes, they passed by me, sir.
15 Question: Which side of you, your right or
16 your left?
17 Answer: To my right, sir ... landed in the
18 region of our Pig" parked in Pilot Row and they passed
19 on the right.
20 Over the page, I should pick up at B:
21 "Mr Underhill: Did you fire any more shots?
22 Answer: Yes, three more shots.
23 Question: As far as you could tell, did any
24 of those shots hit him?
25 Answer: I thought I got him at that time.
1 Question: What made you think you got him?
2 Answer: His body jerked backwards.
3 Lord Widgery: You are quite confident,
4 I gather, that the first two groups of three were fired
5 at the same man - three and three at one man and then
6 you are not sure whether the next man was the same man
7 or not?
8 Answer: On each occasion I could not say
9 whether it was the same man or not, sir."
10 The second half of the page, at the question
11 under E:
12 "Question: I am sorry, but I do want to get
13 this right. The picture you give me is that there were
14 people about in that corner throughout this time, and
15 you got some moments when you could see the gunman and
16 some moments when he was obscured by the people?
17 Answer: Yes.
18 Question: So throughout the period you fired
19 these twelve shots there would be moments when you
20 could see and moments when you could not because people
21 were passing?
22 Answer: Yes."
23 So the upshot of all that is that he fired
24 four sets of three shots at a gunman or gunmen in the
25 gap between blocks 1 and 2 and that as a result of the
1 second set of three shots he thought that he hit the
2 man at whom he was firing and in the fourth set of
3 three shots he believed that he hit the man against
4 whom he was firing. He also described a hail of
5 bottles coming down. If we take Day 13, page 4 at B,
6 he was asked this:
7 "Question: While you were firing that group
8 of shots at the man or men who you spoke of did you see
9 anything else going on by way of hostile activity
10 towards the troops?
11 Answer: Yes, sir, there was a hail of
12 bottles coming from this block of flats down here on to
13 the Pig."
14 Then he says by that he guesses about 40 or
15 50 bottles:
16 "Question: Do you know what was in them?
17 Answer: I could see some of them. Some of
18 them were milk bottles, empty and full ones and there
19 was acid bombs coming down from there.
20 Question: How do you know they were acid
21 bombs?
22 Answer: One of our men got one, sir."
23 He says, if you go to page 8 of this bundle,
24 at D, that he saw a body in the car park. This is not
25 what I was looking for. Can we go to the top of the
1 page, please. His evidence was that he saw a body in
2 the car park. The question asked by Mr Hill at the top
3 of the page is this:
4 "Question: Did you see that body before you
5 first started firing at the man you say you saw, or
6 afterwards?
7 Answer: I think it was after, when I went
8 into my position, sir.
9 Question: At the time when you saw that body
10 had you discharged all of your shots or not?
11 Answer: No, sir.
12 Question: Had you fired at all at that stage
13 when you saw that body?
14 Answer: I may have, sir, but I do not think
15 so."
16 It is quite possible, indeed not unlikely,
17 that the body to which he was referring was that of
18 Jack Duddy because, as appears from -- if we have the
19 second half of the page -- E, the questions I was
20 looking at a moment ago, I am afraid I took them out of
21 context, were that he was asked:
22 "Question: When the body was there did you
23 see many people in the car park?
24 Answer: There was all the time. There was
25 a lot of people milling about in the car park.
1 Question: Even after this body was lying on
2 the ground?
3 Answer: Yes."
4 So the position appears to be that, according
5 to his evidence, as he thinks, he began firing after he
6 had seen the body to which he was referring. If that
7 is so it would mean that whilst people were tending to
8 Jack Duddy something like a dozen bullets, on S's
9 evidence, were being fired over their heads towards the
10 gap between block 1 and 2 and, according to S's
11 evidence something like 7 or 8 shots were going towards
12 S in the opposite direction.
13 If we may have P1.25, we will see the
14 description of his shot that S gave. He describes
15 himself as being behind the wall of the houses on the
16 west-hand side of Chamberlain Street. His line starts
17 about -- the highlighter does not seem to work on
18 something this dark, but he is to the west of the
19 houses, the back of the houses on the west side of
20 Chamberlain Street and one can just see the trajectory
21 of his shot going into the gap between block 1 and
22 block 2.
23 If we may then have a look at report number
24 2, soldier S, page 3, there is a discrepancy in his
25 statements on the issue as to whether or not he saw or
1 heard any nailbombs being thrown from the Rossville
2 flats. In his first two statements to the Royal
3 Military Police he said, see the first one, that:
4 "Nailbombs and acid bombs were thrown from
5 the top of the flats on the men from my unit."
6 That was at 22.30 hours on 30th January. At
7 9.30 in the evening, five days later, his statement
8 said:
9 "From my position I saw people throwing
10 nailbombs and acid bombs from the balconies of block 1
11 of the Rossville flats. About five nailbombs were
12 thrown altogether but I did not see them cause injury
13 to any of the troops."
14 In his SA statement he said this, see the
15 next column:
16 "In my earlier statements I have said that
17 nailbombs were thrown as well. This is not really
18 correct. I heard some distant bangs and I assumed that
19 these were nailbombs."
20 Professor Walsh has commented on that, as
21 follows:
22 " ... in his first RMP statement Private S
23 claimed that nailbombs and acid bombs were raining down
24 on the flats, while in evidence to the Tribunal he only
25 mentioned acid bombs ... he explained the discrepancy
1 rather weakly by saying that he heard distant bangs and
2 assumed that they were nailbombs. Neither the
3 alteration nor the explanation was disclosed during the
4 Tribunal proceedings."
5 There is indeed the discrepancy that you can
6 see and the Tribunal will consider what it makes of
7 that difference.
8 If we may go to the next page, page 4, there
9 is a discrepancy on the issue of whether or not -- on
10 the position of the impact of the first set of shots
11 fired by Private S's first target at Private S. What
12 he is recorded as saying in the first RMP statement is
13 this:
14 "About four single shots were fired in my
15 direction. They passed about five to ten metres from
16 me and struck the walls of derelict houses behind me
17 about fifty metres away."
18 In his SA statement it says the following:
19 "I heard the sound of firing from that
20 direction and could hear that the rounds passed me and
21 hit the back wall of Chamberlain Street houses between
22 5 and 10 metres behind me."
23 Upon which Professor Walsh has commented:
24 "... in his [1st RMP] statement S claimed
25 that the shots fired at him by the gunman between
1 blocks 1 and 2 passed about 5 to 10 metres behind him.
2 In his statement to the Treasury Solicitors his version
3 altered to the effect that the shots hit the wall about
4 five to ten metres behind him. Once again, this
5 discrepancy was not disclosed during the Tribunal
6 proceedings."
7 I am afraid something has gone wrong with the
8 typescript there. Professor Walsh must have meant to
9 say that -- the distinction is that in his first
10 statement he said that the shot passed about five to
11 ten metres away from him and struck the walls about 50
12 metres away. In his SA statement he said that the
13 rounds passed him and hit the back wall of the
14 Chamberlain Street houses between five and ten metres
15 behind me. The discrepancy is between where the shot
16 struck, not the closeness with which the shot passed
17 him. So if Professor Walsh has been accurately quoted,
18 there is a discrepancy but not quite the one that is
19 there specified.
20 In his oral testimony he was asked this:
21 "Question: Did you know where those shots
22 struck?
23 Answer: The shots passed me, the rounds
24 passed me and went on past me, must have struck
25 somewhere to my rear.
1 Question: How far to your rear do you think
2 they landed?
3 Answer: Could have been --
4 Question: Did you hear them land actually?
5 Answer: Not really. I just heard the shots
6 coming past me closely."
7 So that testimony does not really tell one
8 where he is saying that the shots landed, but there is
9 undoubtedly a discrepancy between the account in the
10 first RMP statement and the account in the SA
11 statement.
12 If we go to page 5, the issue here is whether
13 or not Private S actually saw Sergeant O's target. As
14 we shall see, Private S gave evidence of seeing
15 Sergeant O firing. That appears first in his second
16 RMP statement, where he said this:
17 "I saw a gunman open fire from the ground
18 floor window, about three windows in from the southeast
19 corner of block 1 of the flats ... O engaged the
20 gunman ... I was not able to observe the gunman long
21 enough to give an accurate description of him."
22 In his SA statement he says:
23 "I saw O, who was by his Pig on my right,
24 fire shots at the other corner of the car park ...
25 I could not see what his target was, as it was behind
1 the wall I was standing behind."
2 In his oral testimony he was asked this:
3 "Mr Underhill: During that period when you
4 were firing those groups of shots did you see anyone
5 else, any other soldier fire?
6 Answer: Yes, I saw O ... some shots fell in
7 front of him which he did not see and I shouted at him
8 that he was under fire. I could not see what he was
9 engaging, but he was engaging a gunman here."
10 It may be that this is simply a distinction
11 between being able to see that he was engaging a gunman
12 and being able to see who that gunman was, but at any
13 rate, if one looks at the distinction between his
14 second RMP statement and his SA statement, he appears
15 to be saying in the one that he saw the gunman but not
16 long enough to give an accurate description of him and
17 in the SA statement, that he could not see what his
18 target was.
19 Can we look at bundle B, page 693, where he
20 gives a little more detail on one topic. At the bottom
21 of the page he says, having described previous firing:
22 "About 30 seconds later the crowd opened up
23 and made a similar gap. I saw a man in a kneeling
24 position in the gap between blocks 1 and 2 of the
25 flats. The man was facing my way and I saw two muzzle
1 flashes coming from his shoulder position. I fired
2 three aimed shots at the man and I saw his body jerk
3 backwards. I believe I hit him. The crowd closed the
4 gap again so I was unable to fire any more. The gap
5 opened again after about 30 seconds and I saw a man in
6 a kneeling position. I saw three muzzle flashes from
7 his shoulder position. I fired three aimed shots at
8 the man before the gap in the crowd closed."
9 I do not know whether that was intended to
10 suggest that the crowd was acting in co-ordination with
11 the gunman, or simply that it happened, that in the
12 open flow of the movement of the crowd gaps opened and
13 closed and in the interval he fired the shots that he
14 fired. If it was intended to suggest that the crowd
15 was acting, as it were, in concert with the gunman, it
16 certainly was not something that appears in any
17 subsequent evidence.
18 May we then have a look at report No. 3,
19 Soldier S -- appendix 1, 233. Soldier S's evidence is
20 corroborated by that of Sergeant O, who in his oral
21 testimony said this: he was asked this question:
22 "Question: At the same time was there
23 shooting from your own men that you were aware of?
24 Answer: The only one that I could actually
25 see firing was Soldier S, who was standing slightly to
1 my left against the back wall of 32 or 34
2 Chamberlain Street."
3 That is exactly where he is shown in the
4 photograph we have just looked at:
5 "He was firing across my front into the gap
6 between block 1 and block 2 into that area ...
7 Question: The opposite corner from the one
8 you were firing?
9 Answer: Yes.
10 Question: Did you see what target he was
11 engaging?
12 Answer: Only once, I got a glimpse of a man
13 kneeling down in that area of, say, between blocks 1
14 and 2, firing a weapon from the shoulder.
15 Question: What sort of weapon was he
16 firing?
17 Answer: It was a short-barrelled rifle of
18 some description. Again, but I could not say, I only
19 got a glimpse of the man through the people milling
20 around."
21 Then he had earlier said that he and
22 Private S, that is right, the first soldiers to open
23 fire:
24 "Question: How soon did you hear fire from
25 the Parachute troopers start?
1 Answer: I think a matter of about ten
2 seconds after the initial firing came from the
3 Rossville flats.
4 Question: Did you see who started firing?
5 Answer: I think round about the vehicle that
6 I was at it would be either myself or Soldier S who
7 would be one of the first two to open fire."
8 My learned friend has set out in 6 the
9 consistencies between the two accounts; they both said
10 that Private S fired from the back wall of 34
11 Chamberlain Street. They both said that his target was
12 at the western corner of the Rossville flats in front
13 of the gap between blocks 1 and 2. They both said that
14 they thought the target was firing an M1 or similar
15 kind of weapon. They both said that there was a crowd
16 around Private S's target."
17 For those who are interested to know what an
18 M1 carbine looks like, may we have F24.1? That is
19 a picture, which rather unfortunately is only displayed
20 in black and white.
21 That is an M1 Garand, an American weapon, as
22 I understand it. If we go to F24.6, that is an M1
23 carbine. Though it does only in these photographs
24 appear in silhouette, it is much, much better in the
25 hard copy. I think if anybody is interested it is
1 probably better to look at it in hard copy because this
2 really does not tell us anything. That is the position
3 in relation to Soldier S.
4 I should say that S's statement to this
5 Tribunal is to the general effect that he now has
6 little direct recollection of the events of the day.
7 The evidence that I have so far referred to
8 indicates that Pig 1 had in it at least Lieutenant N,
9 Lance Corporal V, Privates Q, S, 19 and 112. There
10 must have been about four others, one of whom is
11 Lieutenant N's signaller, who is the man shown on the
12 photograph which has Lieutenant N in it.
13 Another, according to his statement to the
14 Tribunal, is O17. That statement may be found at
15 temporary statement bundle 34. He, as this statement
16 reveals, was a Private in the Mortar Platoon and at
17 paragraph 7, which is in the second half of the page he
18 says this:
19 "We all had SLRs with us, but on the ground
20 that day I was carrying a rubber bullet gun rather than
21 an SLR. It was too cumbersome to carry both weapons so
22 I left my SLR in the Pig. We did not expect to be
23 facing any shooting that day. We took it in turns to
24 carry rubber bullet guns. Soldiers liked to have
25 a rubber bullet gun. Unlike the SLR it was a gun that
1 we could fire because it did not kill people. Because
2 of the smoke and noise it produced, it frightened
3 people. It made them move and dispersed crowds. We
4 could have as many rubber bullets as we could carry."
5 Over the page, the second half, paragraph 13,
6 he says:
7 "I remember the vehicles going towards the
8 area of the riot and through a barrier in the road
9 nearby, which I think is the barrier marked barrier 12
10 on the map attached. I was in the Platoon Commander's
11 Pig.
12 "I am pretty sure it was the lead Pig; I do
13 not know how many Pigs were behind us."
14 So one therefore identifies him as someone
15 who was in Pig number 1 and who deployed with a baton
16 gun on that day, as did Private 112. So we have,
17 I think, by this process, identified at least seven of
18 those who were in Pig number 1 and I think we can
19 identify another Corporal Widgery number 162 was,
20 according to Sergeant O's statement to this Tribunal,
21 in Pig number 1 and his Widgery statement says that he
22 was working with 019. Could we look at B1 960. This
23 is the statement of Widgery 162. In the second half of
24 the page, he says:
25 "I was in an APC which moved into the
1 wasteground just off Pilot Row. I de-bussed from the
2 APC and ran towards the alley which runs towards
3 Eden Place and Chamberlain Street to try and arrest
4 some of the people who were throwing stones and bottles
5 in the Rossville flats forecourt. As I ran across the
6 wasteground towards the alley I saw a man whom I could
7 not recognise again running towards the alley from the
8 direction of William Street. He was carrying in his
9 hand a metal stake about a foot long. When he saw me
10 he threw the stake at me and turned and ran down the
11 alley towards Chamberlain Street. 019, who was working
12 with me, saw the man throw the stake and he fired one
13 round at him from his rubber bullet gun. I could not
14 see if the round hit the man as my view was obscured by
15 the wall of a house joining Eden Place. The man
16 disappeared into Chamberlain Street."
17 One gets, from that, that Corporal W162 was
18 in what certainly looks like Pig 1 and was working with
19 Widgery 019, who was also in Pig 1.
20 That ought to identify eight of the persons
21 who were in Pig 1, but I should say that, despite what
22 Soldier Widgery 17 says, it is not certain that he was
23 in Pig 1 because he describes himself as being with
24 Corporal P. Corporal P was, according to his evidence
25 -- that is to say P's evidence -- in Pig 2. If you go
1 to temporary statement 34.2, you will find paragraph 14
2 of Widgery 017's statement, where he says:
3 "N was in the front of our Pig next to the
4 driver, Inquiry 1577. I think there were about ten
5 people in the back of the Pig including P, and I think
6 013." Then he deals with various others. He says:
7 "Q may also have been there and possibly 019
8 and Inquiry 1401 (but I am less sure on that point).
9 162 was in our Platoon, but I do not think he was in
10 our Pig."
11 This is potentially extremely complicated but
12 I think one can summarise it in this way: 17 says, in
13 his present statement, that he was in Pig 1 but there
14 are a number of indicators which suggest that he may be
15 mistaken on that. The first is that P was there, but
16 in fact, according to his evidence to Widgery, P was in
17 Pig 2, that is at Day 13, page 45C. He refers to Q
18 possibly having been in Pig 1. Q was indeed in Pig 1
19 and he says possibly 019 was there and he certainly was
20 in Pig 1 and he says Inquiry 1401 may have been there
21 but he is less sure on the point. He is not in fact on
22 the nominal roll. So there is a fair possibility that
23 017 may in fact have been in Pig 2, in which case we
24 have identified only seven of those who were in Pig 1
25 and not eight. He says:
1 "162 was in our Platoon, but I do not think
2 he was in our Pig." But according to 162, he, 162, was
3 in Pig 1. So that may be another indication.
4 Lastly, if we look at B1 472, this is 017's
5 own statement to the Royal Military Police. He says,
6 the second half of the page:
7 "About 1610 hours on 30th January my Company
8 deployed against rioters in the William
9 Street/Rossville Street area. We moved in an APC and
10 other vehicles and de-bussed when we got near to
11 Rossville flats. The APC in which I was travelling
12 halted to the northeast of the northern most block of
13 Rossville flats. I was armed only with an RUC-pattern
14 riot gun and baton rounds."
15 The APC which halted to the northeast of the
16 northernmost block of the Rossville flats was Pig
17 number 2. So I think the combination of that is that
18 017 is highly likely to be mistaken in thinking that he
19 was in Pig number 1.
20 I now come to the soldiers in Pig number 2.
21 The Pig was under the control of Sergeant O who had
22 arrived back from a training course in Cyprus and went
23 straight from arriving back from Cyprus to
24 Londonderry. He was with the driver in the passenger
25 seat in the front as the Pig drove down
1 Rossville Street. His evidence described the passage
2 of that vehicle, its turn to the left -- that is to say
3 the east -- behind the north of block 1. As it turned
4 four of its members got out of the back, and they
5 included Corporal P and Private U, until, in the end,
6 it halted, as we have seen from the photographs, midway
7 in a line between block 1 and the side wall of the
8 bottom house in Chamberlain Street, number 36.
9 When the Pig stopped four of the men got out
10 with Sergeant O, leaving behind the driver and he moved
11 towards a crowd which was running towards the back of
12 36 Chamberlain Street. At the back wall of
13 Chamberlain Street he arrested someone who had thrown a
14 bottle at him from about 10 metres away and handed that
15 manoeuvre to a Corporal who put him in the back of the
16 second Pig.
17 If we look at temporary statement 23.6, he
18 describes that exercise at paragraph 31:
19 "I reckon we had cut off about 200 people
20 between my Pig and Lieutenant N's Pig. I could also
21 see people running through the courtyard of the
22 Rossville flats (as that was the way the Pig was
23 facing) and some were stumbling and falling. These
24 people were of no interest to us at all. We were
25 looking for the rioters whom we believed we had trapped
1 between Lieutenant N's Pig and my Pig, and I therefore
2 turned my back on the courtyard of the Rossville flats
3 and faced north towards the wasteground and Lieutenant
4 N's Pig. The men who de-bussed from the rear of my Pig
5 similarly faced north. They were looking to arrest the
6 hard core rioters, those in the 18 to 30 years of age
7 range, and those with stones in their hands. They
8 would let women and anyone else who was mixed up in it
9 to run past them.
10 "32. I had only gone one or two paces away
11 from the Pig when I had a bottle thrown at my head
12 which hit the Pig behind me. I immediately went to
13 arrest the man who had thrown it at me. He was only
14 a couple of feet away from me. I grabbed hold of him
15 with my left hand. He struggled with me. During the
16 arrest I was hit at least twice - one blow in the ribs
17 which just bounced off my flak jacket and one thump
18 around the neck by fleeing rioters. I hit him with my
19 rifle and knocked him to the ground by using the rifle
20 as if it were a baton. I actually smashed the plastic
21 stock of my rifle on his head to subdue my prisoner and
22 the plastic stock shattered. This meant that when
23 I later fired my rifle I had to hold it in a different
24 way and so the first shot was not as accurate as it
25 would otherwise have been."
1 He then described, and described to
2 Lord Widgery, coming back to his vehicle and coming
3 under fire from the Rossville flats. If we turn to
4 Widgery, Day 13, page 37, at the bottom half of the
5 page he was asked this, the last question but one:
6 "Question: It was actually when the arrest
7 operation was being carried out that this intensive
8 fire opened up?
9 Answer: That is correct.
10 Question: That was intensive fire which you
11 have told us was directed I think from four or five
12 positions?
13 Answer: Yes.
14 Question: In different parts of Rossville
15 flats?
16 Answer: Yes.
17 Question: The most intensive fire that you
18 have experienced in Northern Ireland?
19 Answer: Yes.
20 Question: And that intensive fire opened up
21 from these four or five positions in the Rossville
22 flats at vehicles which were dominated by the flats and
23 none of your men or none of the military personnel in
24 the area were wounded or touched by that fire?
25 Answer: No.
1 Question: About how many shots would have
2 been included in this intensive fire?
3 Answer: The initial burst of firing would
4 have been about 20 or 30 shots.
5 Question: Then the next burst?
6 Answer: Then it sort of steadied down and
7 there was continuous fire for about two or three
8 minutes - not much more.
9 Question: Could it have been that several
10 hundred shots were fired at the military?
11 Answer: Not to that extent: at the most
12 round about 80 shots or 100 shots were fired from those
13 blocks, off these different positions.
14 Question: Round about 80 to 100 shots fired
15 in this few minutes?
16 Answer: Yes.
17 Question: At soldiers who were actually
18 engaged in an arrest operation?
19 Answer: Yes.
20 Question: Whoever was firing, they must have
21 been very bad shots, must they not?
22 Answer: And also very stupid.
23 Question: Very stupid and very bad shots?
24 Answer: Yes.
25 Question: Because firing from those
1 positions, in the positions you have described, it
2 would have been like shooting a goldfish in a barrel,
3 would it not?
4 Answer: Those are your words, not mine.
5 Question: Would you not agree that one could
6 hardly miss from those positions?
7 Answer: I would agree that a trained man
8 could not miss from those positions."
9 I have taken this passage, which is from his
10 cross-examination by Mr McSparran, because it sums up
11 the evidence that he gave in-chief, which was to the
12 effect, as we have seen, that the firing opened up
13 within the space of one or two seconds from four or
14 five different positions. He said it was with weapons
15 of different calibre, low and possibly some high
16 velocity shots. He said that the first burst of fire
17 hit the corner of the wall at the back of 36
18 Chamberlain Street at about four or five metres in
19 front of the men in his Platoon; that he and others
20 then moved back to the Pig; prisoners were put into it;
21 the Platoon then spread out into firing positions to
22 try to identify the targets and about ten seconds later
23 they opened fire, either O or S being one of the first
24 to fire and he then became aware of firing all round
25 him.
1 Then he described firing at a target at the
2 southeast of the car park. The first target that he
3 said he identified was a man wearing a dark jacket with
4 dark hair with a pistol in his right hand standing
5 behind a low wall at the southeast of the car park,
6 firing around the rear off side of a red Cortina. If
7 we could have P1.21, we will see -- I think it would be
8 better to have this in hard copy and also to look at
9 Q7. If you look at the trajectory map, his target is
10 said to be at the southeast of the car park at the spot
11 that I am highlighting on the screen and which can be
12 seen in the photograph, at least in hard copy. It is
13 at the spot at which the wall running parallel to block
14 3 comes out to the west before extending to the south
15 at the intersection between the netball area and the
16 children's playground.
17 His evidence was that a Cortina was parked in
18 the angle of that low wall about 50 metres away from
19 him and that the gunman was behind the wall and the
20 wall and the boot were about the same height.
21 If we could go to transcript Day 13, page 29,
22 what he said was this, after the first question:
23 "Answer: Well, the man was behind the actual
24 low wall itself and using the Cortina as cover, firing
25 round the rear right-hand end of the Cortina. He was
1 firing a pistol in my direction towards the Pig.
2 Question: Could you see what he was
3 wearing?
4 Answer: He wore a dark jacket and dark
5 hair. That is as much as I can identify of that man."
6 The next question but one:
7 "Question: In which hand was he holding the
8 pistol?
9 Answer: Right hand, sir.
10 Question: What did you do? How did you know
11 he fired the pistol?
12 Answer: By the kick of his arm as he was
13 firing the pistol. There is a distinct kick as you
14 fire a pistol and you could see the kick of the weapon
15 in the man's hand.
16 Question: How many shots did he fire?
17 Answer: I could not say just how many, but
18 he fired quite a few.
19 Question: Did you come to any conclusion as
20 to what sort of pistol it was?
21 Answer: He fired too many rounds for it to
22 be a six shot revolver, therefore I assume it was
23 a semi-automatic weapon.
24 Question: You think it was more than six
25 shots; is that right?
1 Answer: Yes, sir.
2 Question: What was the range?
3 Answer: About fifty metres, sir.
4 Lord Widgery: That is a long shot for
5 a pistol, is it.
6 Answer: Yes, sir, it is.
7 Mr Gibbens: Did the bullets reach you?
8 Answer: I could not say.
9 Question: Were you aware of them passing
10 you?
11 Answer: I was aware of quite a few bullets
12 passing me at that time, but I could not say they came
13 from that man. I could not say any came from that man,
14 sir. There were quite a lot flying around at that
15 time, sir.
16 Question: You fired at him?
17 Answer: Yes, sir, I did. I fired three
18 rounds at him.
19 Question: Were they aimed shots?
20 Answer: Yes, fired from the shoulder through
21 sights.
22 Question: Did you hit him?
23 Lord Widgery: How many rounds did you fire?
24 Answer: Three. I fired initially one round,
25 which missed. I seen it strike the rear window of the
1 Cortina and go through and out of the back window of
2 the Cortina, the rear side window and through and out
3 of the back window. You could see that going through
4 which, therefore, passed to the left of the man's
5 body. I corrected my aim and fired a further two shots
6 and the man was thrown back out of my sight.
7 Mr Gibbens: Was he still behind the wall,
8 then?
9 Answer: Yes, he was."
10 If we go to the next page, he says this:
11 "Question: Was the car taller than the
12 wall?
13 Answer: I would say the boot of the car was
14 roughly the same height as the wall itself."
15 The next question but one:
16 "Did you see what happened to him after you
17 fired the second two shots?
18 Answer: I continued to observe the area and
19 the first person I seen, I believe, was a Knights of
20 Malta, a first aid man, running from the area of
21 Chamberlain Street along the back of the wall. He was
22 running upright, fully exposed. He ran towards where
23 this person was down behind the wall. I suppose he was
24 administering first aid. At the same time there were
25 now two or three people scurrying along the back of the
1 wall, crouched down. You could just see their backs,
2 they were bent and they came along also to the same
3 position where the man was.
4 Question: He was attended to by something
5 like three or four people?
6 Answer: Yes ...
7 Question: Did you see what happened to him
8 after that?
9 Answer: They then started to take the body
10 away. I do not know whether he was dead, or just
11 wounded or what.
12 Question: Could you see the body?
13 Answer: No.
14 Question: Because he was below the level of
15 the actual wall?
16 Answer: Yes. They removed him through the
17 alleyway between blocks 2 and 3."
18 If we go to temporary statement 23.8, we will
19 see from paragraph 41 of his statement, he says:
20 "The gunman was firing the pistol - I could
21 tell this by the way it kicked back towards him. I am
22 not sure how many times he fired at me. I have an
23 impression in my mind that he fired more than six shots
24 very quickly which made me think that the pistol was
25 automatic. I would say he was about 50 yards from me
1 and it is not surprising that he did not manage to hit
2 me at that distance. A short-barrelled pistol is very
3 inaccurate over that kind of distance, particularly in
4 the hands of someone who is not an expert marksman. If
5 he had hit me from that range he still could have
6 killed me.
7 "42. I was satisfied that I had identified
8 my target so I fired one round at the gunman. It
9 missed. I pulled the shot just to the right of my
10 target and it went through the rear passenger window of
11 the driver's side and then through the back window of
12 the vehicle. I think the fact that the stock of my
13 rifle was broken caused me to miss. At the range of 50
14 yards with an SLR you do not normally miss."
15 We are not presently able to identify who
16 that target was or is.
17 The second target described by Sergeant O in
18 his evidence was a man with an M1 carbine on the
19 catwalk between blocks 2 and 3. If we look back at Q7
20 we will see that target O2 is where I have highlighted
21 it on the screen, but since this is a two-dimensional
22 drawing it does not show the elevation. If you look at
23 the picture, P2 1, what he is describing is a shot at
24 someone on, or close to, what I have described as the
25 catwalk between blocks 2 and 3 on the first catwalk as
1 you ascend and his evidence was that the man was
2 standing at the edge of the balcony at the junction of
3 the catwalk and the veranda, firing what he took to be
4 an M1 carbine, which he described as being fairly
5 fast.
6 He returned fire, one round missed but after
7 the next two the man went down, hit either in the
8 shoulder or the head, and was dragged to cover by
9 people from block 3. If we look at temporary statement
10 bundle 23.9, we will see that. That is described in
11 paragraph 49 of the statement to this Tribunal:
12 "As my line of vision followed the group
13 carrying the gunman's body ..." that is the first
14 target:
15 "... I looked up to the first balcony at the
16 southern end of block 3 ... where I saw another
17 gunman. The man was shielded partially by a vertical
18 concrete pillar but I could see that he was holding
19 a short-barrelled rifle up to his shoulder. I could
20 see the weapon fully and took it to be an M1 carbine.
21 I was familiar with this weapon as it was used at the
22 time by the Northern Ireland police. I am quite sure
23 that this is what it was. There is no way that this
24 man was holding a long range photograph lens or
25 anything of that nature.
1 "50. I could see that this gunman was
2 firing the weapon from the flashes that were coming
3 from its muzzle, although there was nowhere near the
4 same kick from the weapon as that I had seen from the
5 man firing the pistol. I do not know how many times
6 this second gunman fired at me. As soon as I realised
7 he was firing I put my weapon back up to my shoulder
8 and fired one aimed shot at him. He did not move or
9 flinch in any way and I realised that I had missed,
10 probably for the same reason as in the first series of
11 shooting, because my plastic stock was broken. I do
12 not think the bullet would have gone into one of the
13 flats behind him and my impression is that it would
14 have been hit the concrete around which he was
15 standing.
16 "51. I shot at the gunman two more times and
17 I am sure that I hit him. I hit him either in the
18 shoulder or the head at a distance of about 75 yards.
19 I think I probably hit him in the head. The gunman was
20 flung back against the concrete surrounding the balcony
21 with his head up. There was no question in my mind of
22 him ducking down and me having missed again. Once
23 I had hit him and he had fallen back he then dropped
24 out of sight off the balcony below the balustrade
25 level.
1 "52. I then saw people moving towards the
2 gunman in a southerly direction along the first floor
3 balcony of block 3. I am sure there was no movement at
4 all on that balcony while the gunman was firing at me,
5 but as soon as he went down I could see the heads
6 popping up and down along the balcony. I could not see
7 the body but I assumed he was being dragged away."
8 So his second target is three shots at a man
9 with an M1 carbine whom he believes, according to this
10 statement, that he hit either in the shoulder or in the
11 head and who was dragged to cover by people from block
12 3. We are not able to identify who this man was or is
13 either.
14 May we look then at B4 68, which is his SA
15 statement, the second half of the page at paragraph 13,
16 where, having described the shots that I have just been
17 referring to, he says this:
18 "The firing was beginning to slacken off so
19 I watched the position of the gunman. I saw people
20 moving along the verandas of block 3, crouching. They
21 dragged something away from the gunman's position into
22 the covered part of the passageway.
23 "14. There was no sustained fire at us now,
24 just pot shots at us. But there was a lot of stone and
25 bottle throwing, especially from the verandas of block
1 1 and the end of Chamberlain Street."
2 Then he deals with a particular man who
3 dropped a bottle, to which we will come back in
4 a moment.
5 If we go back to his statement to this
6 Inquiry, temporary statement bundle 23.9, at the bottom
7 of the page, paragraph 53, he says effectively the same
8 thing:
9 "After this gunman had fallen I had no
10 impression that I was being shot at from elsewhere.
11 I therefore looked around and changed mentally from
12 being totally focused on my self-protection into my
13 role as Platoon Sergeant, trying to see what else was
14 happening around me and how my men were coping. It was
15 as if I was trying to recreate a mental map as to where
16 my men now were, as compared to where I had last seen
17 them. The two shooting incidents I have described
18 above took no more than a minute or two in total."
19 So although it takes some time to adduce and
20 expound the evidence that relates in relation to these
21 shootings, the amount of time in which they are,
22 according to this and indeed other evidence, said to
23 have taken place is very short indeed. It is after
24 that that he saw S firing, as we have already seen,
25 when we were looking at the corroboration of S's
1 evidence which appears in O's statement.
2 May we then have L213.1. The Tribunal will
3 recall that from what I was saying before Easter that
4 The Sunday Times in their Insight article said, see the
5 last column now on the screen:
6 "But one civilian, whose name we agreed to
7 withhold, told us that he did see someone with
8 a carbine firing at the soldiers from the fifth floor
9 of the flats. The man fired seven shots and three were
10 returned at him. This gunman corresponds exactly with
11 the man at whom Soldier O said he fired three shots and
12 hit."
13 The apparent source of that information was
14 the witness Billy Gillespie, whom the Tribunal will
15 recall denies speaking to the Sunday Times in these or
16 any terms.
17 After having seen S fire the shots that we
18 have been considering in relation to S, O moved back to
19 the back of his Pig and checked up on his men. If we
20 can go back to Widgery transcript, Day 13, page 32,
21 what he said was this, the second half of the page,
22 second question after D:
23 "Question: What was going on in the
24 courtyard itself? Were there any other things being
25 thrown at the troops?
1 Answer: There was a lot of stoning, a lot of
2 bottling and there were acid bombs thrown from the
3 block 1 of the Rossville flats itself.
4 Question: How did you know they were acid?
5 Answer: When I had finished engaging the
6 second gunman, I moved round to the back of the
7 vehicle. I could smell the acid then. Apparently one
8 had already been thrown. I looked up and there was an
9 acid bomb coming over the verandas there. They are
10 very distinct when they do come, the colour of them.
11 They are a creamy colour, all the ones that I have seen
12 at least. They have all got screw-on tops, whereas
13 your normal bottle, throwing a milk bottle like that
14 has not got a screw on top. Whenever it came off
15 I shouted it was an acid bomb. It struck the ground in
16 front of me, but in between the acid bomb and myself
17 there was one of my soldiers. Soldier T was standing
18 between me and the acid bomb.
19 Question: Was he affected by that acid?
20 Answer: It splashed him up his legs.
21 Question: Did you give him an order?
22 Answer: I said, if any more acid bombs are
23 thrown from that area, I told them to return fire on
24 it.
25 Question: Did you turn away then?
1 Answer: Well, I turned away to go back round
2 to the original position I had been in. I heard
3 Soldier T fire two rounds. At the same time I heard
4 the busting of a bottle. We turned round and again it
5 was an acid bomb that came off the block.
6 Question: Did you see where he fired the two
7 rounds?
8 Answer: No, I did not see what strike he
9 had.
10 Question: Then did the firing begin to
11 subside?
12 Answer: Yes, sir. By this time the firing
13 had slackened off. There was just random fire, the odd
14 shot ..."
15 After this he came round to the front of the
16 Pig somewhere near the front near side mud guard and
17 saw a body being taken away between blocks 2 and 3.
18 May we go to temporary statement 23.12, where we will
19 find the description of that at paragraph 66. Having
20 referred to the firing of Private S, as we can see from
21 the immediately preceding paragraph, at 66 he said
22 this:
23 "When I got back towards the front of the
24 Pig, somewhere near the mud guard of the front wheel on
25 the passenger side I noticed a group of people coming
1 down to ground level from block 3 of the Rossville
2 flats and carrying a body which I assume to be the body
3 of the gunman I hit on the balcony of the Rossville
4 flats previously. They disappeared through the gap
5 between blocks 2 and 3 of the Rossville flats and went
6 out of my sight. I cannot now describe any of the
7 people carrying this body.
8 "67. Almost instantaneously I came under
9 fire again from a gunman at ground level on the corner
10 of block 2 of the Rossville flats at the mouth of the
11 gap between blocks 2 and 3. I have marked this
12 position as point D on the attached map."
13 If we look at temporary statement 23.22, it
14 shows the same spot. Point D on the attached map is in
15 the corner between block 2 and 3 at ground level, that
16 is the same position as appears on the trajectory map
17 at Q7 and the photograph marked by Sergeant O.
18 If we go back to where we were before, 23.12,
19 he says this, the third line down in paragraph 67:
20 "I assumed that this man was firing with the
21 same weapon which had been used by the gunman on the
22 balcony of block 3 whose body I thought I had seen
23 carried through the gap between blocks 2 and 3 a moment
24 before. The weapon certainly look the same, like an M1
25 carbine. The gunman fired at me once or twice and
1 I fired two aimed rounds back at him. He jerked round
2 the corner and out of my sight. I do not think that
3 I hit him. I would say that this incident was about
4 three or four minutes after I had engaged the pistol
5 man described above. I would stress again that while
6 I was concentrating on what I had to do with this
7 gunman, I was not taking in anything else that was
8 going on around the car park. I remember, however,
9 after firing at this gunman, that things appeared to
10 quieten down. I have been asked if I remember a woman
11 being shot in or around the Rossville flats car park.
12 I do not."
13 In the course of his evidence to Lord Widgery
14 he said something which we should look at, at Day 13,
15 page 34B. What he says at B is this: he was asked this
16 question:
17 "Question: As regards firing from the other
18 side, firing against you, how would you describe it?
19 Answer: It was the most intense firing
20 I have ever seen in Northern Ireland in such a short
21 space of time. I have had more rounds being fired, but
22 it has been over a far longer period."
23 As we have seen he was cross-examined to the
24 effect that those who fired must have been both very
25 stupid and very bad shots and in relation to that he
1 has something to say in his later statement to this
2 Tribunal. If we go to the temporary statement bundle
3 23.7, at paragraph 37 of his statement to this Tribunal
4 he says this:
5 "The firing was not controlled, not the usual
6 type of deliberately aimed sniper fire. If it had been
7 more controlled, then I am sure me and some of my men
8 would have been hit. We were very lucky that we were
9 not, and my impression is that it was inexperienced
10 people in the Rossville flats who had control of these
11 weapons and that is why we avoided any serious
12 casualties. I am fairly sure that there were no hard
13 IRA men there when we first entered the Bogside. Those
14 that did have the weapons were not particularly good at
15 using them. I saw bullets strike the ground to my left
16 (to the east of point A on the map) and also strike the
17 rear (west) wall of the end house in
18 Chamberlain Street, which I believe was numbered 36.
19 By the time this firing started, most of the crowd had
20 run past my Pig into the courtyard and were heading for
21 the gaps between blocks 1 and 2 and blocks 2 and 3.
22 "38. I am aware of the theory that the
23 firing I heard initially was perhaps sounds
24 reverberating from shots fired by others in my Platoon
25 in the area of Eden Place and Chamberlain Street. I am
1 quite certain that this is not the case. As an
2 experienced soldier, I had a keen sense of what was
3 incoming fire, what was outgoing fire and what was
4 sporadic fire going on around me. I was quite certain
5 that the fire I have described above was incoming fire
6 and this was confirmed by seeing the bullets strike the
7 ground to my left and the wall at the rear of 36
8 Chamberlain Street."
9 If we may come to report number 2, Soldier O,
10 page 2. I mention this matter because it is something
11 to which Professor Walsh refers in his analysis. The
12 issue relates to Sergeant O's position when the firing
13 from the Rossville flats started. Professor Walsh's
14 comments, which we see in the penultimate paragraph,
15 are this:
16 "In his first RMP statement ... Sergeant O
17 said that he was at the rear of the military vehicle
18 when the firing started, while in evidence he said that
19 he was returning to it."
20 What he said in his first RMP statement was:
21 "When the firing started I was positioned by
22 the rear of the Humber."
23 In his SA statement he says:
24 "I was following the Lance Corporal and
25 arrestee back to the Pig, facing the flats, when there
1 was a burst of firing ... when the firing started we
2 put our prisoner in the back of the Pig."
3 In his oral testimony he said:
4 "We were moving back to the vehicle and that
5 is when we came under fire from the Rossville flats."
6 My learned friend Mr Grierson's observation
7 in relation to that in the last column is:
8 "There is no clear inconsistency here.
9 Sergeant O may have just reached his APC when the
10 firing started, in which case he would have been both
11 positioned by the rear of the Humber, according to his
12 first RMP statement, and moving back to the vehicle per
13 his oral testimony."
14 I perform a similar exercise in relation to
15 page 3, if we may have page 3, where Professor Walsh
16 has commented that -- the issue here is the number of
17 rounds which Sergeant O fired at his second target.
18 Professor Walsh's target is this:
19 "In the original statement he said he fired
20 two shots at the gunman on the catwalk, while in
21 evidence he said this was three. He corrected his
22 original statement the next day ... however, he did not
23 explain why he did not mention firing the three shots
24 in his original statement."
25 His first RMP statement read as follows, see
1 the second column:
2 "I fired two 7.62 millimetre rounds, well
3 aimed shots at this gunman. I saw his body jerk
4 backwards and out of sight."
5 His statement at 2.30 the next day but one,
6 on 1st February was as follows:
7 "I fired first one round. I did not observe
8 a strike. I therefore fired two rounds at this gunman,
9 who continued to fire at my location after I had fired
10 at him."
11 So there is a discrepancy there. If we now
12 turn to temporary statement 23.17, we will see in
13 paragraph 95 of his statement to this Tribunal what he
14 says in relation to that:
15 "I made a second statement to Corporal INQ
16 1855 of the RMP on 1st February. This statement is
17 very short and deals more accurately with my shooting
18 at the man on the veranda of block 3. It is not an
19 issue of me changing my mind on the point. I was very
20 tired when I signed the first handwritten statement
21 which Corporal INQ 1855 had prepared on the night of
22 30th January. He took it away to be typed up and came
23 back I think the next day with a typewritten version.
24 I read through the typewritten version and noticed that
25 it was incorrect as it related to the number of shots
1 I had fired at the gunman on the veranda of block 3 of
2 the Rossville flats. I wanted to amend it as I was
3 quite clear on how many shots I had fired at the
4 various stages. The Corporal said that the best thing
5 to do was to prepare a short supplemental statement
6 which clarified this point. He wrote it out in
7 longhand there and then and I signed it and he then
8 took that away to be typed as well. My ammunition
9 return on the night of 30th January stated that I had
10 fired eight rounds not seven, so there was never any
11 doubt in my mind as to what I had fired. I think
12 I also made it clear when speaking to 'This Week' ...
13 a few days later that I had fired eight rounds, not
14 seven."
15 If we may go back to page 4 of counsel's
16 report number 2 in relation to Sergeant O. Again,
17 I perform a similar exercise in relation to the issue
18 of whether or not Sergeant O actually saw the second
19 target's body being dragged away. Professor Walsh has
20 commented:
21 "In his first RMP statement he said that he
22 did not see the gunman on the catwalk after he had shot
23 him but he saw people moving along the catwalk,
24 dragging something before they disappeared. In
25 evidence, however, he said that he saw people drag the
1 body of the gunman into the cover of an archway ..."
2 If we look at his first statement, he said:
3 "I fired ... at my second target. I saw his
4 body jerk backwards and out of sight ... I did not see
5 this man again ... I saw several persons move along the
6 verandas in a crouched position towards the gunman's
7 location. They appeared to be dragging something.
8 They then left the veranda."
9 In his SA statement he says:
10 "I saw people moving along the veranda of
11 block 3, crouching. They dragged something away from
12 the gunman's position into the covered part of the
13 passageway."
14 In his oral testimony he said this:
15 "People moved along the balcony on block 3
16 and dragged the man into the cover of an archway into
17 the catwalk ... when I finished firing at the man up in
18 the catwalk I observed the area. I watched the body
19 being taken away. There was nothing further came from
20 that area ..."
21 So the distinction is between whether he saw
22 people dragging something before they disappeared or
23 whether he saw the body -- saw people drag the body of
24 the gunman into the cover of the archway, so there is a
25 discrepancy to that effect which is dealt with, see
1 temporary statement bundle 23.9, paragraph 52 of his
2 statement, where he says this:
3 "I then saw people moving towards the gunman
4 in a southerly direction along the first floor balcony
5 of block 3. I am sure there was no movement at all on
6 that balcony while the gunman was firing at me but as
7 soon as he went down I could see the heads popping up
8 and down along the balcony. I could not see the body,
9 but I assumed he was being dragged away."
10 In other words, the something that he saw,
11 what he assumed being dragged what was he assumed to be
12 the body that he believed himself to have shot.
13 Could we then go back to report 2, Soldier O,
14 page 5. Again I draw attention to this because it is
15 something in relation to which Professor Walsh has
16 commented. The issue that is identified is whether or
17 not the group of people who moved towards the body of
18 Sergeant O's second target later reappeared at ground
19 level. Professor Walsh's comment is as follows:
20 "In his original statement he said that ...
21 he saw people moving along the catwalk dragging
22 something before they disappeared and reappeared
23 shortly afterwards at ground level. In evidence,
24 however, he ... made no mention of them reappearing at
25 ground level."
1 Indeed that is so. If one looks at his first
2 RMP statement, he says -- I look at it about halfway
3 through the second column:
4 "They appeared to be dragging something.
5 They then left the verandah. They reappeared on the
6 ground floor between blocks 2 and 3. I saw the group
7 move out of sight and then one male person appeared and
8 fired at my location."
9 There is no mention of them reappearing in
10 the subsequent statements. If you go to temporary
11 statement 23.17, paragraph 94, he says this:
12 "Where I describe in my first RMP statement
13 that the people who had been dragging something along
14 the verandah then reappeared on the ground floor, this
15 was my logical conclusion at the time. I did not
16 recognise these people. In my first RMP statement,
17 where I say -- " then that goes to a different point.
18 So what he is saying, as I understand it, it
19 was an assumption on his part that the people who
20 appeared were those who had been dragging the body --
21 the people who appeared on the ground floor were those
22 who had been dragging the body on the upper floor. The
23 Tribunal may think that the fact that that assumption
24 or conclusion does not appear in subsequent evidence is
25 not of very great significance.
1 If we could go to item 8, report number 2,
2 Soldier O, page 8. The issue that is here identified
3 is whether or not Sergeant O warned Private T about the
4 acid bomb which fell just before Private T fired at the
5 acid bomber. In his third RMP statement he said:
6 "I ordered T to shoot at the man should he
7 throw another acid bomb at us. Shortly afterwards
8 I saw the man reappear at the balcony and throw another
9 bottle. I shouted a warning to T and I heard him fire
10 two shots. I did not see the strikes of these shots."
11 In his SA statement he says:
12 "I told him to shoot at the man if he dropped
13 another. I started to turn away and heard him fire two
14 shots. I did not see them strike."
15 His oral testimony is to the same effect, so
16 the discrepancy is between the statement where he said
17 he shouted a warning about the bomb and his subsequent
18 statements which suggested that he had turned away by
19 the time he heard Private T fire at the acid bomber.
20 Lastly, item 9, report number 2, Soldier O,
21 page 9, there is a discrepancy as to the number and
22 type of bombs which he saw or heard being thrown from
23 the Rossville flats. His first RMP statement said:
24 "Also we were stoned, bottled and had several
25 acid bombs and petrol bombs thrown at us. These were
1 from the flats area, number 1 flat in particular."
2 In his oral testimony he was asked, see the
3 last column but two:
4 "Question: Did you hear any sound that you
5 thought was a nailbomb?
6 Answer: No, sir.
7 Question: You saw no bombs at all apart from
8 the acid bomb?
9 Answer: The only one I saw was the acid
10 bomb."
11 Professor Walsh has correctly commented that:
12 "In his original statement he claimed that
13 they came under attack from several acid bombs and
14 petrol bombs. In evidence, however, he said that he
15 saw only one acid bomb and did not mention seeing any
16 petrol bombs."
17 That is the conclusion to what I want to
18 refer to in relation to report number 2. I wonder
19 whether that might be a convenient moment to adjourn?
20 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, certainly.
21 9.30 tomorrow, please.
22 (3.07 pm)
23 (Proceedings adjourned until
24 Thursday, 11th May 2000 at 9.30 am)