1 Thursday, 18th May 2000
2 (9.34 am)
3 MR CLARKE: Before we go on to the next topic
4 in sector 2 I wonder if we could have the virtual
5 reality on the screen. I think it may be helpful if we
6 look at hot spot 70. This is a computer model, as we
7 can see. What it shows at this juncture is the low
8 wall in front of block 2 represented diagrammatically,
9 and one sees how it goes down in gradations parallel
10 with the garages at the back of block 2. The diagram
11 also shows on the screen the southeastern exit to the
12 Rossville flats car park. There is the wall upon which
13 the words "Join your local IRA unit" were displayed.
14 One sees, as the picture unfolds, the architecture of
15 the walls at the southeast end and the two sets of
16 steps that lead towards the southeast corner: that is
17 the rough position. That is the configuration we have
18 been looking at. That is a photograph of the
19 configuration we have been looking at and we can see
20 the words "Join your local IRA unit" above the men in
21 the photograph. That is the remnants of the wall.
22 Before I go on to the evidence of some of the
23 journalists in relation to this sector, there is
24 a topic that I want to deal with which is this: a
25 number of the civilian witnesses speak of the way in
1 which the soldiers in the courtyard of the Rossville
2 flats and in Chamberlain Street arrested or assaulted
3 them or others. It is not possible or I think useful
4 to attempt to trace every encounter between a Platoon
5 or more of soldiers and 200 or more fleeing civilians.
6 But there are some incidents which keep on recurring in
7 the evidence and which it would be convenient to refer
8 to at this stage in some sort of order. Firstly, there
9 are those who speak of an elderly man being assaulted.
10 There are those who speak of a Knight of Malta being
11 assaulted. There are those who speak of the arrests in
12 33 Chamberlain Street and there are those who speak of
13 an assault on a man at the north end of block 1 of the
14 Rossville flats.
15 Dealing first with the elderly man, if we
16 could look at AB101.1, we will find the evidence of
17 Alana Burke in which, in paragraph 4 at the bottom of
18 the page, she says that she moved on to the wasteground
19 in Eden Place:
20 "And Frankie Campbell shouted to me that the
21 Army were coming and to run. We ran down towards the
22 car park at the Rossville flats to try to get out of
23 the way. As I tried to get out of the way I looked
24 over my shoulder and saw soldiers on foot. I saw a
25 short elderly man struck in the face with the butt of a
1 rifle by a soldier (at the spot marked A) he seemed to
2 rise up in the air for a split second and then fell to
3 the ground with blood streaming down his face."
4 If we go to AB101.4, we will find that the
5 spot marked A is on Pilot Row at the spot shown on the
6 photograph. This may have been the same man who is
7 referred to at AC25.2 by a witness called Charles
8 Canning who says, in paragraph 13:
9 "I also recall when I was in Rossville Street
10 seeing an old man being beaten up by a Para. Another
11 man tried to stop and help him. However, the Para hit
12 the man who stopped to help him with a baton round in
13 the face. I think that military policemen took these
14 two men away."
15 Then he talks of his own arrest where he
16 says:
17 "14: As I was making my way towards the
18 rubble barricade a Para in the vicinity of Glenfada
19 Park North saw me and started to run towards me with an
20 SLR. There was also a soldier running after me from
21 behind with a baton gun. I fell to the floor and the
22 Para chasing me from behind caught up with me. Both
23 Paras arrested me somewhere in front of block 1 ...
24 approximately at point H on the map." That is on the
25 west side of block 1 about a third of the way down:
1 "The Para carrying the SLR kept threatening
2 to shoot me, although I cannot recall his precise
3 threats. Other Paras were shooting all over the
4 place."
5 So, so far as the persons other than himself
6 is concerned, Mr Canning saw an elderly man being
7 beaten up by a Paratrooper in Rossville Street and
8 another man who tried to help being hit in the face.
9 If we go to AG43.3, we will find paragraph 20
10 of the witness statement of Charles Glen, the Knight of
11 Malta who appears in the photograph of those
12 surrounding Jack Duddy. The part of which we have seen
13 before in another connection. In paragraph 20 he
14 refers to an armoured vehicle parked very close to mow
15 at point C" which is just below Pilot Row, with its
16 rear door facing the Rossville flats and the rear cabin
17 facing towards William Street. Paras piled out of this
18 vehicle. I remember one Para carried a sub machinegun,
19 the rest were armed with rifles." I go to the last
20 sentence in the paragraph:
21 "As they jumped out of the vehicle they were
22 hyped up and shouting abusively at the crowd.
23 "21: I saw the first two Paras jump out of
24 the rear of the vehicle. I was then distracted as one
25 of the Paras grabbed an elderly man who was standing
1 very close to me by the neck and started hitting him
2 with his rifle. The Para was holding his rifle by the
3 butt and bringing the barrel down repeatedly on the
4 man's head. The elderly man was quite tall and wore an
5 overcoat of some sort. He had grey hair and looked as
6 though he was in his sixties."
7 We saw this yesterday, he said:
8 "22: I did not think that the older man had
9 done anything to deserve such treatment and I shouted
10 to the Para 'I order you to stop. ' The Para threw the
11 old man to one side and aimed his rifle at me. Then
12 another Para came from the same vehicle and hit Charles
13 Glen in the chest."
14 If we go to AH27.2, we will find the evidence
15 of Patrick Harkin, who describes a similar scene. He
16 was watching from the window of a flat in block 2 of
17 the flats. If we look at paragraph 9 of his statement
18 he says this:
19 "I was looking out of the front window for
20 maybe 10 minutes when all of a sudden I saw Saracens
21 racing south up Rossville Street. One drove in the
22 opening between the wasteground and the car park behind
23 the Rossville flats (it stopped at the point marked C)"
24 the point marked C is where Sergeant O's Pig appears in
25 the photograph:
1 "... facing down towards the car park.
2 I thought it was a snatch squad of soldiers looking to
3 arrest trouble makers. I saw about half a dozen
4 soldiers jump out of the Saracen whilst people were
5 fleeing across the car park towards the two between
6 blocks 1 and 2 and blocks 2 and 3. I would not class
7 those people as rioters. They were trying to get away
8 from the soldiers as soon as possible. The soldiers
9 then started roughing people up. One thing that stands
10 out in my mind is that they started attacking an old
11 man, hitting him with the butts of their rifles. I did
12 not know the old man well but I recognised him as a
13 local refuse collector. He was a non-offensive kind of
14 man and I thought it was terrible. I did not see
15 anyone confronting the soldiers."
16 LORD SAVILLE: Could you show us where he was
17 looking from?
18 MR CLARKE: Yes, I can. AH27.5. He was
19 looking from B, the flat at B to events happening at
20 C. The reference to the elderly man being a refuse
21 collector or having been a refuse collector is
22 consistent with a statement, the relevant passage of
23 which we will find at AO31.3, in the evidence of Hugh
24 O'Donnell. He had run down Macari's Lane from William
25 Street into the wasteland when he heard the roar of the
1 armoured vehicles. He then saw three APCs pull up at
2 points which he describes as being points 6, 7 and 8 on
3 his map. Can we have that, it is AO31.9? He refers --
4 it is quite difficult to find on this map where the
5 points are -- his evidence is of APCs 6, 7 and 8. 6 is
6 approximately in the position of Sergeant O's Pig on
7 the photograph, but further over to the east. 7 is not
8 in the position of any Pig shown on the photograph, nor
9 indeed is 8, but 8 is very close to Rossville Street
10 where there were, of course, a number of vehicles. He
11 says that one of the soldiers came out of the APC at
12 point 6 which is close to where Sergeant O's Pig is
13 shown in the photograph and fired two shots into the
14 alleyway between blocks 1 and 2.
15 If we go back to AO31.3, at paragraph 18, the
16 second half of the page, he says:
17 "I ran into the car park," he had been
18 running south along the wasteground:
19 "As I went I continued to look over my left
20 shoulder at what the soldiers were doing. When
21 I reached the approximate position marked 12 ... my eye
22 was drawn to a tall man in his 50s picking his way
23 through the rubble at the rear of the gardens of the
24 houses on the west side of Chamberlain Street in the
25 approximate position marked 13. He was leaning his
1 left hand against the rear garden walls as he went as
2 if to steady himself. He was not doing anything but
3 trying to get out of the way. I recognised him as
4 being one of our bin men. Before that, he had been
5 a doorman at the old Rialto cinema in Market Street.
6 I did not know his name. Suddenly I noticed a soldier,
7 I think the soldier who had been standing at position
8 9, go over to this man and knock him hard over the head
9 with the barrel of his rifle. The man put his hands up
10 to his head to protect himself."
11 If we go back to the map at AO31.9, what he
12 was saying is that he, the witness, was at point 12
13 when the events to which he is referring took place and
14 that the tall man on the west side of Chamberlain
15 Street was, he describes, in the approximate position
16 marked 13 which is behind the western wall, behind the
17 backs of Chamberlain Street just below Eden Place. He
18 thinks that the soldier had previously been at position
19 9.
20 To similar or not dissimilar effect is the
21 evidence which we may find at AM169.2 of Manus Hugh
22 McDaid, who says in paragraph 10:
23 "As we approached the door to block 1,
24 I noticed a soldier to the west of the houses on
25 Chamberlain Street approximately at point E on the
1 attached map, striking an old man with the butt of his
2 rifle. The soldier had his back to me and I saw him
3 strike the old man once. As he made to strike him
4 again, the soldier turned so that I could see him in
5 profile. He was a tall man, wearing a helmet, goggles
6 and a gas mask, gloves and camouflage Army dress, and
7 high boots which covered his ankles. The old man was
8 in his mid 60s, wearing a flat cap and a brown overcoat
9 and looked pale and thin. The soldier seemed to be
10 holding the man with one arm whilst trying to strike
11 him with the butt of the rifle in his other hand.
12 "11: I instinctively started to run over to
13 help the old man, intending to remonstrate with the
14 soldier and hit him if he would not stop striking the
15 old man. However, my wife and another man near us
16 restrained me and I was pulled into the stairwell of
17 the northern end of block 1 of the Rossville flats."
18 Point E may be found at 169.5 and this, as
19 one can see, is at the rear of 36 Chamberlain Street,
20 much further south than the previous witness. It is of
21 course entirely possible that what is being referred to
22 is a completely separate incident.
23 Another witness who places the assault on an
24 elderly man at a similar position is William Patrick
25 McDonagh, whose statement is relevantly at AM192.2. He
1 had been watching from the door of his girlfriend's
2 flat in block 1. Picking it up at paragraph 9, he says
3 this:
4 "I looked down into the courtyard. The first
5 thing I saw was a man who I thought at the time was
6 quite elderly, although I do not know why. He had been
7 seized by two or three soldiers who were standing
8 behind a Saracen which I think was a patchy camouflage
9 colour. The man and the soldiers were at the south
10 gable end of the west side of Chamberlain Street, at
11 the approximate position marked C. The Saracen was to
12 the south of the men, at the approximate point marked D
13 facing south:
14 "10: I did not know the man who had been
15 seized by the soldiers. It seemed to me that the
16 soldiers were trying to hit him. Two of them were
17 holding him and another one had his rifle raised at
18 shoulder height as though about to hit him. I did not
19 however actually see the soldier hit the man. I could
20 not hear anything that the soldiers or the man may have
21 been saying because there was so much shouting and
22 screaming all around. There were a couple of boys in
23 the courtyard who tried the get to the old man but I do
24 not think they reached him. Perhaps they thought that
25 they would get arrested if they went too close to the
1 soldiers."
2 The map is at AM192.8 and the point which he
3 is referring to is point D which is to the south --
4 what he says is that the man and the soldiers were at
5 the approximate point marked C which is immediately
6 below, to the south of 36 Chamberlain Street, though he
7 puts the position of the Saracen to the south of that
8 at point D on his map.
9 If we turn to AM402.1, another person
10 watching from the flats, this time from her flat in
11 block 2, was Susanna Miller. At 402.1, paragraph 7 in
12 her statement, the second half of the page, she says:
13 "I then went to the bedroom window at the
14 back of the flat which overlooked the car park, to see
15 what was happening. I saw large crowds of people
16 running south through the car park towards the
17 Rossville flats. From my bedroom window I could not
18 see out on to Rossville Street and could only see part
19 of the wasteground around Eden Place and Pilot Row.
20 I do not remember looking at the wasteground as my
21 attention was drawn to a man who was standing against
22 the garden wall of the gable end house in
23 Chamberlain Street at approximately the point marked
24 B." The position marked B is at the southwest corner
25 of number 36:
1 "This wall is also shown on the attached
2 photograph and I have marked the place where the man
3 was standing as point 2.
4 "8: I cannot say what colour hair the man
5 had, although he was going bald. I would say he was in
6 his early 50s. He was wearing a three quarter length
7 dark coat. I could not see his face as he was facing
8 west towards Rossville Street. Two soldiers were
9 hitting the man in the face with their rifle butts.
10 The soldiers were wearing an ordinary Army uniform and
11 were very tall. I do not remember what they were
12 wearing .... The man they were hitting was trying to
13 resist by sheltering his face with his forearm but they
14 hit him about three or four times. He seemed angry and
15 it looked as though he was cursing them. That was the
16 last I saw of the man as I called to Charlie, the
17 soldiers were killing an old man. I do not know who
18 the old man was. I have never found out who he was or
19 what happened to him and this is something which upsets
20 me, although I believe that I would recognise him if
21 I saw a photograph of him. I did not hear any shots
22 during this time, but people were still running south
23 down Chamberlain Street. I did not see any vehicles or
24 other soldiers in the area."
25 AM402.4 is the photograph which confirms that
1 what she is talking about are events at a spot marked
2 as 2 on the photograph, that is to say at the wall
3 behind number 36, the back wall of number 36. She was
4 looking, on her evidence, from the flat marked 1 in the
5 photograph on the first or second floor.
6 All the statements that I have so far
7 referred to place the assault on what is described as
8 an elderly man somewhere in the wasteground -- either
9 near number 36 or in the wasteground to the north of
10 the flats. By contrast there is a witness,
11 Michael Creagan, whose evidence relevantly appears at
12 AC119.4 who, at paragraph 26 says this.
13 "I was now not sure that I could get out of
14 the alleyway between blocks 2 and 3. I could see a low
15 wall running parallel to block 2 in front of the
16 garages and made my way to there to shelter behind it.
17 As I ran for cover I saw an old man aged about 55 or 60
18 being harassed by some soldiers. I have marked his
19 position as H on the plan. I cannot remember exactly
20 what this man looked like, but he was bald and looked
21 old and tired. He had been caught by three or four
22 soldiers who seemed to be trying to pull him in the
23 direction of the Saracens in the north western corner
24 of the car park. I remember that the soldiers wore
25 visors and helmets so I could not clearly see their
1 faces. I and two other people helped pull the old man
2 free of the soldiers. The soldiers made no big deal of
3 us helping the man and let him go. They made no
4 attempt to arrest us. The old man ran through the
5 alleyway between blocks 2 and 3 ..."
6 AC119.7 shows the spot that he is talking
7 about, point H appears just above the second L of
8 "Rossville flats" in the plan and it may be that this
9 is a separate incident from that which has been
10 described in the earlier evidence. May we then look at
11 AD113.3, this is another of the Sunday Times interview
12 notes which indicate that it is possible that the
13 elderly man who is being referred to, or at least one
14 of the elderly men who is being referred to was called
15 William Doherty. The note is headed "William Doherty,
16 the grey haired man", and it is obviously a note of
17 Phillip Jacobson. The note reads:
18 "Mr Doherty is our famous grey haired man."
19 I can go down about a dozen lines to a sentence
20 beginning on the right hand of the page:
21 "He was heading towards the car park when a
22 Para overtook him and grabbed him. 'I am not so fast
23 on my feet any more and this little Para, he was
24 certainly Scottish, I know that well enough for he was
25 abusing me all the time, came running up behind me and
1 grabbed me' we know from other accounts that the Para
2 started beating the shit out of Doherty. He hit him
3 several times on the top of the head with the barrel of
4 his rifle causing cuts and abrasions to the top and the
5 side of the head that eventually required 7 stitches,
6 'the Para kicked me all the way back to a Saracen that
7 was standing about 20 yards away where Eden Street used
8 to be'. Doherty was hurled inside; as he got up the
9 Scottish Para said 'you Irish bastard' and crashed the
10 butt of his rifle into Doherty's face. I have seen the
11 scar that this produced in the region of the left
12 forehead and face. Next a soldier, and Doherty is
13 honest enough to say he is not sure it was the same
14 one, opened his gun, put in a rubber bullet and fired
15 it at literally point blank range at Doherty's left
16 arm. This caused very severe bruising according to
17 Doherty 'the arm was black from shoulder to wrist for
18 almost a month'. The pain was excruciating 'but I did
19 not say much because if I had, I would surely have been
20 murdered'".
21 The rest of what is contained in this
22 statement relates to events at Fort George which is a
23 topic in itself. Could we have a look at AD113.1, this
24 is the NICRA statement which Mr Doherty made at the
25 time. In it he says:
1 "I was chased and caught by a soldier wearing
2 riot equipment ... he took me back to a Saracen about
3 20 yards away .... I was put inside the Saracen."
4 Then he recounts essentially the same story
5 as appears in the note made by the journalist except,
6 if you go back to AD113.3, if you look at the note made
7 by Mr Jacobson, it is a combination of direct quote
8 from Mr Doherty, we have at the top of the screen in
9 a moment the quote that ends with the words "'he was
10 abusing me all the time'. Came running up behind me
11 and grabbed me.'". Then what has been added next --
12 what is written next in the interview is "we know from
13 other accounts that the Paras started beating the shit
14 out of Doherty, he hit him several times et cetera,"
15 and then the interview note goes back into quotes two
16 lines below:
17 "'The Para kicked me all the way back to a
18 Saracen standing about 20 yards away,'" and then
19 describes what happens when he is hurled inside. In
20 fact if one is looking at the evidence of Mr Doherty
21 alone, the passage about the Para starting to beat the
22 shit out of him on the way to the Pig does not feature
23 in either his NICRA statement or any direct quote from
24 him.
25 I come next, secondly, to the evidence about
1 a Knight of Malta being assaulted. If we may go to
2 AG19.2, we will find, I hope, the statement of Joseph
3 Martin Gallagher. At paragraph 6 he says this:
4 "We went through the double doors into block
5 2 from the stairway and got down on our stomachs as we
6 went through the causeway (shown on the attached
7 photograph as point 2)." What he is referring to as
8 the "causeway" is the second verandah on block 2:
9 "There were railings in front of me and
10 I looked down at the courtyard. In one brave moment,
11 I looked out on the courtyard and saw, what I believe
12 was a first aid man being beaten up by some soldier.
13 The man was wearing a dark coat and he had a strap over
14 his shoulder with a box attached. I do not know what
15 colour the box was. I associated this box with that of
16 a first aid man. I cannot say precisely where the man
17 was, although I believe he was approximately at the
18 point marked C.
19 "7: I no longer remember the soldiers
20 hitting the man with their boots and rifle butts,
21 although I said this in my previous statement which is
22 attached. I know that the first aid man was getting a
23 kicking but I cannot recall the precise nature of the
24 beating nor how many soldiers were involved. I heard
25 more shots and I got down for cover."
1 If we look at AG19.7, we will find the
2 photograph which illustrates where point 2 is. If we
3 take AG19.9, we will see where point C is, point C
4 being the spot where this witness says that he saw the
5 Knight of Malta getting a kicking. That is point C,
6 which is behind the back wall of No. 32
7 Chamberlain Street on the west side.
8 Similar evidence appears from Hugh O'Donnell
9 at AO31.4. We have looked at his evidence a little
10 earlier in the context of the assault on the elderly
11 man but at paragraph 19 of his statement, he says:
12 "I ran south a few steps further before
13 looking behind me over my left shoulder once more.
14 This time, when I was in the approximate position
15 marked 14. I saw, I think in the position marked
16 15 ... what I thought to be a first aider or Knight of
17 Malta as he had some form of arm band on his arm. I
18 cannot recall whether or not he was wearing a hat of
19 any kind. He was up against the wall and was facing
20 towards me as he kneeled or was on his hunkers crouched
21 over to treat someone lying on the ground. Suddenly a
22 soldier, again possibly the same one as had hit the bin
23 man, went over to the first aider and hit him, I think
24 over the head with either the barrel or the butt of his
25 rifle. I cannot now recall which it was. I was
1 terrified and continued to run towards the alleyway
2 between blocks 1 and 2 ..."
3 The map is at AO31.9. He was in the
4 approximate position marked 14 which I am now
5 highlighting. The first aider he saw in the
6 approximate position marked 15, which is behind the
7 west wall of No. 36. If we may now have on the screen
8 P278, it is a photograph that I think we have seen
9 before. What it shows for our purposes is a Knight of
10 Malta, or what looks very like a Knight of Malta, lying
11 at a position about level with the fence which divides
12 the wasteground from the Rossville flats courtyard,
13 that is somewhat further to the north, if I have the
14 spot correct, than the evidence of the previous two
15 witnesses.
16 LORD SAVILLE: What direction are we looking
17 at?
18 MR CLARKE: We are standing looking in an
19 easterly direction, I believe, at the western wall/back
20 gardens or yards of Chamberlain Street. I believe we
21 are looking at the back of the western side of
22 Chamberlain Street.
23 LORD SAVILLE: The fence is the one that
24 separates the wasteground from the car park?
25 MR CLARKE: I think it is and I think it is a
1 fence that is passing from west to east
2 geographically. I say it slightly hesitantly because
3 the foreshortening does funny things I think to what
4 happens. Indeed one can see it is slightly better, as
5 usual, in the hard copy. What happens is that at the
6 very point we are looking at there is a corner post and
7 the fence goes from the east to west dividing the
8 wasteland from -- dividing one part of the wasteland
9 from another part. But it also goes from north to
10 south so that where the two soldiers are with their
11 guns, I believe them to be walking along, in effect,
12 a lane bounded by the west wall of the houses in
13 Chamberlain Street on one side and a fence, which may
14 peter out, the photograph does not show one, on the
15 east side. So that the post which I have highlighted
16 -- which I have marked with a red arrow on the screen
17 is in fact a corner post.
18 LORD SAVILLE: You go along between the fence
19 and the back of the western side of
20 Chamberlain Street?
21 MR CLARKE: I believe so and there are --
22 I do not have them at my finger tips -- there are a
23 number of references in the witness statements to the
24 alley or the lane that is behind the houses on the west
25 side of Chamberlain Street and there are, I believe --
1 I stand open to correction -- referring to an alley
2 bounded by one side by the back walls and on the other
3 by a fence.
4 LORD GIFFORD: If one looks at one of the
5 aerial photographs, actually looking at E278, one sees
6 the white wall adjacent to the fence and one can see
7 where it is in relation to Chamberlain Street.
8 LORD SAVILLE: 278 seems to be the one on the
9 screen, is that right?
10 LORD GIFFORD: No. It is a trajectory
11 photograph I have got hold of, trajectory photograph F,
12 which is P17.
13 MR CLARKE: Can we have P7 on the screen?
14 LORD GIFFORD: One can on the hard copy
15 certainly see the rather distinctive white wall, also
16 on 278.
17 LORD SAVILLE: It looks as though that tends
18 to rather confirm what Mr Clarke was saying.
19 LORD GIFFORD: I think so.
20 MR CLARKE: Lastly on this topic, there is
21 some evidence that would appear to relate to what is
22 here under consideration. If we go to temporary
23 statement 31.1, we will find the evidence of
24 Soldier V. In the second half of the page, he says
25 this:
1 "2.3 I remember as I got out of the Pig
2 noticing a person in a uniform and a respirator. My
3 immediate thought was that the guys here were extremely
4 well organised. I had never before or since seen
5 civilians with respirators and uniforms. Because of
6 this I ran at the man and pinned him against the wall
7 with my rifle. As I did so I could hear him calling
8 out something along the lines of Knight of Malta or
9 medic, first aider. I no longer remember exactly what
10 he said, however, it was sufficient for me to realise
11 that he was not a threat. At appendices 1 and 2 are
12 two photographs that show a Knight of Malta against a
13 wall on some wasteground next to wire fencing. They
14 also show two soldiers walking away from the Knight of
15 Malta, both wearing helmets and respirators and
16 carrying rifles. I have identified that these soldiers
17 are Paratroopers because of their round helmets. The
18 wall against which the Knight of Malta is lying could
19 be the wall against which I pushed the Knight of Malta
20 who I saw when I first jumped out of the Pig. However,
21 I do not recognise any of these pictures or the
22 soldiers in them and I could not identify this Knight
23 of Malta as the one I pinned to the wall with my
24 rifle."
25 If you look at temporary statement 31.5, we
1 will see that one of the photographs that he is
2 identifying is the photograph that we have just been
3 looking at. If you go to 31.4, that is a very similar
4 photograph -- I think that is simply a blown up version
5 of a second of the photograph that we have been
6 looking. If we go back to P278, the Knight of Malta
7 I think is seen to be wearing -- if you look at the
8 hard copy it looks tolerably clear that he is wearing a
9 gas mask.
10 I then come to 33 Chamberlain Street, the
11 house into which, as we have seen, Mrs Deery and
12 Michael Bridge were taken. I mentioned yesterday that
13 the people in that house were arrested and marched
14 north up Chamberlain Street. It is appropriate to
15 refer to some of the evidence statements given by the
16 people who were in the house at the time when the
17 arrests took place. If we go to AN8.3, we will find
18 paragraph 16 of the statement of Anna Nelis who lived
19 in 33 Chamberlain Street with her sister, Margaret and
20 her mother. At paragraph 16, she says:
21 "I remember being much more worried about the
22 wounded woman then I was about the wounded man. I was
23 very aware that she needed an ambulance fast. When the
24 ambulance did not arrive, I ran back out of the house
25 into Chamberlain Street and approached two soldiers who
1 I saw standing beside a Saracen parked outside my
2 house. I did not remember seeing the Saracen there
3 before and so I think it must have arrived while I was
4 inside the house. (There were possibly two Saracens
5 parked outside our house, but I have only a clear
6 recollection of seeing one). I remember that the front
7 of the Saracen was facing south towards the Rossville
8 flats and the back of the Saracen was pointing in
9 order ... I remember that the two soldiers were
10 standing between the door of our house and the corner
11 of the Saracen. I can remember what these two soldiers
12 looked like very clearly and I think that I would be
13 able to recognise both soldiers if I saw them again.
14 "18: One soldier had the very fair pinkish
15 skin that usually goes with red or fair hair. However,
16 I could not actually see his hair colour because he was
17 wearing a helmet. He had soft features and a roundish
18 face although it was not a plump face. His eyes were
19 light coloured and smaller than average. He was of
20 average build and was not much taller than me (even
21 wearing his helmet) and I am about five feet seven
22 inches tall. I remember that the soldier had
23 a blackened face although I could not still clearly see
24 the colour of his complexion. I do not think that he
25 was wearing a visor because I saw his eyes so clearly.
1 He was wearing army gear. He was holding a rifle in
2 both hands with the butt of the rifle at a level with
3 his stomach and the barrel was pointing upwards and
4 outwards at a 45 degree angle from his chest. This
5 meant that when I approached him his rifle was pointing
6 towards my upper body.
7 "19: The other soldier had a darker skin
8 complexion of the type that goes with dark hair. He
9 was also wearing a helmet and so I could not see his
10 hair colour, dark eyes, about the same height as the
11 other soldier, carrying a rifle.
12 "20: I cannot remember exactly what I said
13 to the soldiers. I know that I explained about the
14 wounded woman and asked if they could get an ambulance
15 for her. I asked the soldiers to come into the house
16 so they could see for themselves how badly wounded the
17 woman was so that they would see that she desperately
18 needed an ambulance. I told them that nothing would
19 happen to them in my house. Although I spoke to both
20 soldiers it was the fair complexioned one who did the
21 talking. The other soldier was much quieter.
22 I remember that the fair complexioned soldier seemed
23 very hyped up. He seemed out of control and was
24 drawing attention to himself by shouting out ugly
25 remarks that could have been directed to anyone in the
1 vicinity. He was generally loud and so offensive that
2 it seemed to me that he wanted to provoke a fight or
3 argument with someone. The language he was using was
4 obscene and he started swearing at me. I think that he
5 had a northern English accent. I think that the other
6 darker soldier may have had a Scottish accent.
7 "21: I think that the two soldiers
8 eventually came into our house and looked at the two
9 wounded people there. At one point, I very clearly
10 remember the fair complexioned soldier saying of the
11 wounded woman: 'Let the whore bleed to death' I think
12 it may even have been when he was actually standing
13 looking at her. It was such a horrible thing to say
14 and I was shocked by it. I think it may have been
15 after that I told the soldiers about the wounded man
16 lying in the backyard. I think the fair complexioned
17 soldier then said something like: 'Let them all die'.
18 "22: All this time I remained very concerned
19 about Mrs Deery's condition. I remember that an
20 ambulance finally arrived. I think that I may have
21 been outside the house in Chamberlain Street when it
22 pulled up near the door of our house. There may have
23 been two ambulances that pulled up but I cannot recall
24 exactly. There was a Knight of Malta with the
25 ambulance. I think that I remained standing in the
1 street and watched as Mrs Deery and Michael Bridge were
2 carried out of our house on stretchers and put into the
3 ambulance. I remember that the two soldiers were
4 watching as the wounded were carried out of the house
5 into the ambulance, which then drove off.
6 "23: After the ambulance had left, three or
7 four soldiers (including the two I have described
8 above) pushed their way into the house and arrested
9 most of the men who were inside, including my brother
10 George Nelis and my brother-in-law George O'Neill.
11 I later found out that the soldiers had arrested
12 a total of 23 men who were all in our house at that
13 time. I cannot remember what any of the soldiers
14 looked like, apart from the two I have already
15 described. My brother George was an amateur
16 photographer and I think that he had probably been on
17 the march earlier taking photographs. The soldiers
18 took the arrested men out of the house and back into
19 Chamberlain Street. They were then marched north up
20 Chamberlain Street with their hands folded behind their
21 heads like criminals.
22 "24: I think that they were then marched
23 into William Street on into the road on the left (west)
24 leading into the wasteground at Eden Place and Pilot
25 Row. However, I cannot be sure of exactly where they
1 were as I was only told about what happened to them
2 later. I did not actually see where they were taken
3 myself. I was told that they were forced to line up
4 against a fence or a wall (I think it may have been the
5 fence in the wasteground at Eden Place and Pilot Row
6 that backed on to the yards of the houses on the west
7 side of Chamberlain Street, but I cannot be sure of
8 this). They had to keep their hands in the air and
9 they were kept at the fence for quite a while before
10 being taken off somewhere else."
11 George Nelis, Anna Nelis's brother's
12 statement is at AN9.3, where at paragraph 20 he says
13 this:
14 "When I went back into the house there were
15 two men there who I did not know. My brother-in-law,
16 George O'Neill, may have been there as well. Shortly
17 after I into the house there was a knock on the door
18 and two men came in carrying Mrs Deery. There were
19 some other men with them as well, but I cannot really
20 recall who they were or how many of them there were.
21 Somebody decided that an ambulance was urgently needed
22 for Mrs Deery and this can either have been my sister
23 or myself. It was at this time that some other men
24 came into the house carrying another man who
25 I understand had been shot in the leg. I did not know
1 then who this was and I do not know. I believe he was
2 taken into the backyard of the house.
3 "21: I went upstairs to hide my camera.
4 I knew that if I was caught by the Army in possession
5 of a camera I would be in for a rough him.
6 "When I came down from upstairs again there
7 were two soldiers in the house. I cannot remember much
8 about them or what they were wearing and I am unable to
9 say whether or not they were armed or whether their
10 faces were blackened up.
11 "I can remember them making abusive comments
12 about Mrs Deery and the other injured man in the house
13 such as let them bleed to death and they deserve it.
14 The house was quite full of people by this stage and
15 everybody was scared. Nobody dared confront the
16 soldiers who seemed to be very angry, unpleasant
17 people. I remember thinking that I had a right to be
18 in the house but this was of no account to the
19 soldiers. The two soldiers ordered everybody out of
20 the house and out into Chamberlain Street, including
21 myself.
22 "24: We were all rounded up out of the house
23 and ordered to go out on to Chamberlain Street.
24 I believe that when we did so the ambulance had not yet
25 arrived for Mrs Deery. I cannot remember an Army
1 Saracen being there either.
2 "There may have been some other soldiers
3 outside the house as well as the two soldiers who had
4 come inside. I believe that the four soldiers marched
5 us north up Chamberlain Street with our hands on our
6 heads. There were about twelve of us and perhaps three
7 or four soldiers. I can remember the soldiers ordering
8 us to walk on the pavement and then as soon as we did
9 so ordering us to walk on the road. Apart from that
10 there was no conversation at all. I think I can also
11 remember seeing some soldiers in Harvey Street, but
12 cannot remember how many.
13 "26: At the north end of Chamberlain Street
14 at the junction with William Street there was a small
15 waste area where a newsagents had been. I believe the
16 newsagents had been bombed or burned down and the area
17 was then just wasteland. There was a wall there and we
18 were all ordered to crouch down facing the wall and
19 keep our hands over our heads. I think we were ordered
20 to crouch down in a semi-circle and the soldiers stood
21 behind us. I believe that we were told that we were
22 waiting for an Army truck which was coming to pick us
23 up and take us away to Fort George."
24 Pausing there, that I think is the place
25 shown in the photograph that we saw yesterday of a
1 number of men sitting down facing a wall with the
2 soldier in what I described as a nonchalant pose:
3 "28: While I was crouched down and was
4 facing the wall, he came up behind me. He told me he
5 had been wounded in Belfast but had then got his
6 revenge by killing four Irish men. He told me how he
7 had shot two of them in the head, one of them in the
8 chest and one of them in the balls. I remember him
9 saying how he had enjoyed watching the man who he had
10 shot in the balls dying slowly. He then said to me
11 that he was going to kill me as well today and that
12 I would not see tomorrow or see my wife again. After
13 what I had seen had happened to Mrs Deery and the young
14 boy in the Rossville flats courtyard I completely
15 believed what blank told me and was certain that I was
16 going to be killed imminently.
17 "29: He was much shorter than me. I am six
18 feet tall and I would say that he came up to my
19 shoulder. He was about five feet three inches tall.
20 He was wearing a helmet and carrying an SLR and spoke
21 with a Scottish accent. I did not really get a good or
22 long look at him at this point.
23 "30: We had been kept up against the wall
24 for about 20 minutes or so when the Army lorry arrived
25 to take us away. We all helped each other get up into
1 the back of this lorry and I believe that two soldiers
2 got in and sat at the very back of the lorry as well.
3 I was in fear of my life at this time and thought that
4 the soldier whom he has been referring to was going to
5 carry out his threat that evening. I think that my
6 brother-in-law was in the back of this lorry as well,
7 but although I may have recognised some other faces
8 I would not have been able to put names to them. The
9 Bogside and the Creggan was not my area as I lived in
10 the Waterside at the time."
11 Mr Nelis gave a NICRA statement, AN9.9, on
12 3rd February 1972. I am not going to read it. It is
13 in very similar terms to his statement made to the
14 Tribunal. He also made a complaint to the RUC. That
15 can be found at AN9.21. It will, I suspect, when it
16 appears on the screen be pretty difficult to read and
17 it is not very easy to read in hard copy. But it is in
18 similar terms to his statement to this Tribunal,
19 although I think that in it he said that he and others
20 were marched out of 33 Chamberlain Street after
21 Mrs Deery and Michael Bridge were taken to the
22 ambulance.
23 If you go to AN9.15, we will find the
24 statement of the soldier that he is referring to. This
25 is a statement taken by the RUC as appears in the top
1 left-hand corner on 10th March 1972 at 1.40 at
2 Palace Barracks. What he says is relevantly this,
3 third line down:
4 "I was standing behind an Army barricade
5 looking up William Street in the direction of a hostile
6 crowd of approximately 60 people who were throwing
7 missiles at Security Forces. This crowd of people were
8 approximately 25 yards or 30 yards away from us in the
9 direction of Chamberlain Street. I saw one man in
10 particular who I cannot positively identify as one who
11 was throwing stones at us. He was wearing a white mac
12 and brown shoes. He had fairly long hair and wore a
13 moustache. He was approximately 31 or 32. When we
14 were given orders to proceed up William Street and
15 arrest, we ran along William Street and this person ran
16 in front of us and then turned up Chamberlain Street
17 and he ran up Chamberlain Street and into a house.
18 I proceeded along Chamberlain Street along with other
19 members of the snatch squad and as I approached the
20 house into which this man ran, a woman came out and
21 told us that there were two injured people in the house
22 and asked us to call for an ambulance. I went into the
23 house and found two injured people. There were also 22
24 other male persons in the house. I brought these 22
25 men out of the house. Among them I recognised the
1 young man who had been in the hostile crowd in William
2 Street. I arrested him and I now know him to be George
3 Stephen Nelis."
4 At AN9.12, he made a supplemental statement
5 on 17th November in which he said:
6 "Further to my statement which I made to the
7 RUC on 10th March 1972 I would like to add that after
8 the persons were brought out of the house they were
9 told to face the wall with their hands above their
10 heads and on the wall, with their feet astride, this is
11 normal procedure when searching persons as it places
12 them in a position where they are unable to physically
13 resist and less likely to escape."
14 At the next page:
15 "Of the 22 men arrested, I was personally
16 responsible for the arrest of five, one of which I know
17 as George Nelis. At no time did I say to Mr Nelis that
18 I had shot four people in Belfast or indicate that
19 I was going to shoot him. I have been in
20 Northern Ireland for a total of 25 months and although
21 I have been shot in the leg myself, I have never shot
22 any person. At no time did I threaten, abuse or in any
23 way ill-treat the prisoners nor did I witness any other
24 person doing the same.
25 "After the prisoners were handed over to the
1 RMP/RUC I did not see any of them again.
2 "Although I cannot say positively that
3 Mr Nelis was throwing stones, I can say that he was one
4 of the crowd all of whom were shouting abuse and
5 encouraging the stone throwers.
6 LORD GIFFORD: Do we have an Inquiry number
7 for him?
8 LORD SAVILLE: Can we have the Inquiry
9 number?
10 MR CLARKE: Not at the moment. You cannot at
11 the moment for two reasons, one I do not know yet on my
12 feet. That is solvable. The other is that this
13 statement and others raise a problem, with which the
14 Tribunal will have to deal, which arises in this way:
15 in this instance, and in others, there are names that
16 appear in the papers which are known to some but not
17 all of the interested parties. If the Inquiry number
18 is placed in the documents the effect will be for those
19 who know what the name, is to break the code and for
20 however so many as know the name of the soldier
21 appearing in a statement in respect of which an Inquiry
22 number is then given, they will know for all purposes
23 what that name -- what the Inquiry number and the name
24 is. It may be that that is simply as it may be and
25 that in order to render this Inquiry run-able, it will
1 be necessary to identify the Inquiry number even though
2 that has the consequence that a substantial number of
3 persons will thereby know both the relationship between
4 the name and the particular Inquiry number. It is a
5 problem that will arise from time to time and raises an
6 issue of principle. The reason why some of these
7 numbers are blank is not inertia on the part of those
8 responsible for the bundles, it is a wish not to
9 foreclose any argument that anybody may wish to run as
10 to whether and on what basis Inquiry numbers should be
11 given, in circumstances where that will reveal the
12 correlation between names and Inquiry numbers.
13 LORD SAVILLE: Thank you very much.
14 Lord Gifford, the Tribunal is aware, of
15 course, and it may well be we can use some of the time
16 on what is provisionally fixed now as the week 4th June
17 to deal with it, or these certain aspects of it. You
18 can rest assured the matter will not remain as it will
19 at the moment, but in order not to foreclose any
20 arguments we have taken the course of simply putting in
21 blanks. Thank you for raising the point and we will
22 bear it in mind and no doubt you will be reminding us
23 of it in due course if we do not get round it. I hope
24 we can deal with at least some aspects of that in the
25 week 12th June.
1 LORD GIFFORD: To be able to give evidence we
2 need to be able to identify those who are tied to
3 particular incidents so we can ask questions about
4 them.
5 LORD SAVILLE: I understand entirely the
6 point you make. As I say, we are not simply letting it
7 go by, and we will have to press ourselves to the
8 problem at the earliest convenient moment.
9 LORD GIFFORD: I appreciate that, sir.
10 MR CLARKE: As long as we are discussing
11 this, I can give as an example of the problems that
12 arise the fact that Inquiry 2003, whom we looked at in
13 considerable detail yesterday, is video taped on the
14 tapes which are in the possession of the Inquiry, the
15 transcript of which is littered with the real names of
16 soldiers and soldiers who are said to have taken part
17 relevantly in the events of Bloody Sunday. Those names
18 are known to those who have possession of the videos.
19 They are not names that will necessarily be known to
20 anybody else and we shall have to grapple with the
21 problem of how to deal with those videos which, if
22 redacted in toto run the risk of being meaningless, if
23 not redacted reveal to those who have the videos, the
24 identity of all, and the code number of the persons
25 concerned.
1 Other statements referring to the arrests
2 have been given. I do not think it is appropriate to
3 refer directly to them, I can simply summarise where
4 they are to be found. Margaret Nelis, who is the
5 sister of Anna and George, has given a statement which
6 appears at AN11, who describes soldiers coming in and
7 searching the house in a very aggressive manner.
8 William Leo Carlin at AC40 was one of those
9 arrested and was the first in the line of men marched
10 up Chamberlain Street and is one of the men shown in
11 the photograph that we saw yesterday, P501, of men
12 sitting facing the wall.
13 William Columba McCluskey, AM120 was one of
14 those who brought Michael Bridge into 33
15 Chamberlain Street and was arrested there and
16 Mr Schlindwein was arrested in the street outside 33
17 Chamberlain Street and, like George Nelis, speaks of
18 a Scottish soldier who he says hit him in the side with
19 the butt of his rifle.
20 Penultimately, Paul Whoriskey, who had
21 brought Michael Bridge into 33 Chamberlain Street and
22 who was arrested there has a statement which is in
23 temporary statement bundle 51.3 and in paragraph 15 he
24 says this:
25 "We were marched north up Chamberlain Street
1 and lined up against a wall on a piece of wasteground
2 at the northeast end of Chamberlain Street at the
3 position marked I on the attached map. We had to stand
4 with our legs spread-eagled facing the wall with our
5 hands and our heads against the wall facing east.
6 After a while we were made to sit on the ground. There
7 was rubble on the ground. Again we were told not to
8 look around or look up and if we did we were hit. We
9 had to sit on the ground for approximately 10-15
10 minutes. While this was going on I noticed from the
11 corner of my eye a photographer at the gable wall on
12 the northwest corner of Chamberlain Street in the
13 position marked J on the attached map. I saw a Para
14 run up to him, gab his camera and take out the film.
15 He had been taking pictures of us coming down
16 Chamberlain Street towards him.
17 "16: After we had been standing there, I
18 cannot recall for how long, we were then pushed and
19 shoved and made to march with our hands on our heads on
20 to William Street, then west along William Street until
21 we reached the junction of William Street and Little
22 James Street. While we were being marched over to
23 Little James Street, the soldiers were shouting at us
24 and telling us not to move from the line. The soldiers
25 were very agitated.
1 "17: After reaching the junction we were
2 instructed to turn right into Little James Street where
3 a flat bed lorry with low metal sides and a canvass
4 roof and back was parked pointing north at Little James
5 Street," and it is in that they are taken off to Fort
6 George.
7 If we look at the map, that is at page 10, we
8 will see that he describes the wall that they were
9 lined up against at the top of Chamberlain Street as
10 being at point I and, indeed, we have seen in some of
11 the earlier pictures that as you go down
12 Chamberlain Street from the north, on the left or
13 eastern side there is indeed a piece of wasteground
14 where a building obviously once had been but was no
15 longer. The photographer that he refers to, he says,
16 was at point J which is on the opposite side of the
17 street and they were taken off to point K which is up
18 in Little James Street.
19 Lastly under this heading, there is a body of
20 evidence in relation to an assault on a man at the
21 north end of block 1 of the Rossville flats, or in the
22 stairwell of the Rossville flats at that spot. If you
23 go to AM173.2, you will find the statement to this
24 Tribunal of Paul McDaid who was standing at a point
25 marked B on his map which is at the south of number 36
1 Chamberlain Street. What he says is this, paragraph
2 10:
3 "When I reached this position at point B, the
4 car park of the Rossville flats was fairly empty.
5 There were between one and two dozen people in the car
6 park. Some people were on the ground, but most people
7 seemed to have already gone through the gap between
8 blocks 1 and 2.
9 "11: I could see two Saracens at the
10 northeast corner of block 1 ... whose position I have
11 marked as C and D. I do not remember there being a lot
12 of soldiers, just two or three soldiers standing at the
13 front of the Saracens, who were wearing reddish gear
14 which I knew was the Paratroopers uniform. I cannot
15 describe the physical appearance of these soldiers.
16 "12: When I first saw the soldier, I could
17 hear shooting but could not say if this was these
18 particular soldiers who were shooting. From my
19 position at the gable end of Chamberlain Street I saw
20 one soldier who was at the northeast corner of block
21 1 ... shoot from chest level in the direction of the
22 gap between blocks 2 and 3. I think he fired a couple
23 of shots but I do not know if he hit anyone.
24 "13: I remember that there was a guy coming
25 out of the northeastern exit of Block 1 into the car
1 park. He started shouting and swearing at the soldiers
2 who were standing by this exit. One of these soldiers
3 attacked the man by hitting him with the butt of his
4 rifle."
5 That is all he deals with in relation to that
6 topic. We need also to look at AM161.4 where we will
7 find paragraph 27 of the statement of Charles McDaid,
8 where he says this, paragraph 27:
9 "I ran on the pavement on the western side of
10 Rossville Street and as I reached just in front of the
11 rubble barricade at the point marked I on the map,"
12 that is just to the north of the barricade:
13 "My recollection is that I slowed down.
14 There were people in front of me clambering over the
15 rubble barricade trying to take cover. As the pace of
16 my running slowed I glanced over my left shoulder
17 towards the soldiers I knew to be at the northern end
18 of Rossville Street. I glanced only for a split second
19 and the only scene which I recall is of a man lying on
20 the ground near the corner of the northern end of block
21 1 ... with a soldier standing over him. Another
22 soldier who had been running towards Rossville Street
23 from the wasteground to the north of the Rossville
24 flats then lay a boot into the man on the ground. The
25 approximate position where this scene took place is
1 marked J on the map and photograph number 1."
2 The map is at 161.13 and J is at the top of
3 block 1 and the place where he says that he was is at I
4 just above the rubble barricade: whether that is the
5 same incident or not one cannot be sure.
6 We saw yesterday the evidence of a witness
7 named Michael Brown, referring to a Paratrooper kicking
8 Barman Duffy in the doorway at the northern end of
9 block 1. There is a little more evidence that
10 I perhaps should have referred to then rather than now,
11 in particular at AM400.2, there is to be found the
12 witness statement of Margaret Mellan who says this at
13 paragraph 10:
14 "I headed straight for the first entrance at
15 the northern end of block 1. The entrance faced due
16 north on to William Street and led into a staircase.
17 The opening was on the eastern side of the entrance.
18 The stairs were concrete and ran up the outside of
19 block 1 opening on to the balconies which led to the
20 front doors of the flats. There were four other people
21 hiding in the entrance to the stairs with me.
22 Barman Duffy, a man called Frank Deane who I knew quite
23 well, a woman in a camel coat and another man I did not
24 know.
25 "11: By the time I reached the staircase
1 entrance there was no one left on the wasteground.
2 I then heard more shooting, this time two or three
3 sharp cracks coming from the north end of
4 Rossville Street. These had a different sound to the
5 shots I had heard earlier and I began to get nervous;
6 I realised that these were probably live bullets not
7 rubber bullets.
8 "12: I wanted to go through the Rossville
9 flats car park and get out through the alleyway towards
10 Free Derry Corner between blocks 1 and 2. From there
11 I could get out of the area and make my way home.
12 After a few minutes I tried to make a run for it,
13 however, the shooting was continuous by now and before
14 I was able to get out of the staircase entrance Frank
15 Deane pulled me back. I am not sure where the shooting
16 was coming from by this time and I do not know whether
17 I could hear lots of shots or the echoes of shots.
18 "13: I do not know how long we had been
19 standing in the staircase but the next thing I remember
20 is a soldier coming up to the entrance and sticking his
21 rifle in. Barman Duffy raised his hand and started to
22 say there is only women her, but the soldier lifted his
23 rifle and hit Barman Duffy in the stomach with the
24 butt. Barman Duffy doubled over, holding his stomach
25 and then the soldier cocked his rifle and turned it on
1 the rest of us. I thought he was going to shoot
2 Barman. He slowly pointed it in each of our faces,
3 I was looking directly at him and thought 'oh, no this
4 is it' I could hear Mr Deane rattling his beads behind
5 me as he said the rosary.
6 "14: I remember that the soldier was tall
7 and probably in his late twenties with a fair face. He
8 was wearing camouflage clothes and had a beret on his
9 head. I do not remember the colour of the beret, but
10 I did notice that there was no signature or badge on
11 it, which I thought was unusual. I would know him if
12 I saw him. He did not speak at all."
13 Pausing there, this is evidence relating to
14 a soldier who was said to be tall whereas the evidence
15 that we saw yesterday of an attack on Barman Duffy at
16 the stairwell at the north of block 1 was of a soldier
17 who was very short, of the order of five foot, "more
18 like a dwarf", was the phrase used by Michael Brown, so
19 whether they are talking about the same person or two
20 separate persons remains to be seen.
21 The other witness who spoke of events here is
22 Roisin Stewart, whose evidence I referred to yesterday.
23 May I come back to the spot that I was aiming
24 to yesterday when I indicated that it was necessary to
25 look at the evidence of some of the journalists in
1 relation to this sector. I have already spoken of
2 evidence from the ITN teams. The BBC had two groups of
3 journalists and cameramen and the like. The first
4 group whose function was to film on the march side, as
5 it were, was John Bierman, the reporter. Cyril Cave as
6 cameraman and Jim Deeney the sound recordist.
7 John Bierman, the reporter in this team
8 returned at a certain stage from Columbcille where,
9 according to his evidence to Lord Widgery, he had gone
10 after being affected by gas at barrier 14 and whither
11 he had been summoned in order to take pictures, almost
12 certainly of Damien Donaghy and John Johnston, by
13 a crowd. He returned to Columbcille Court to somewhere
14 near the junction between William Street and
15 Chamberlain Street where, as he put it, there were
16 still a few youths lobbing the odd brick over the top
17 of the roofs.
18 He then heard someone saying that the Paras
19 are in the Bogside or words to that effect and heard
20 quite a bit of shooting and single shots and he went to
21 the junction of Harvey Street and Eden Place with
22 Chamberlain Street on the Harvey Street side.
23 When he was there he saw troops from
24 C Company come down Chamberlain Street in the direction
25 of the flats and take up a position at the junction to
1 which I am referring. I wonder if we could have on the
2 screen in order to remind ourselves, video 1 at 4.14)
3 (Video played)
4 As I think we can see from that clip that we
5 have, or that portion of the clip we have just looked
6 at, the picture is taken from the Harvey Street side of
7 the junction of troops at the junction between
8 Harvey Street, Eden Place and Chamberlain Street. One
9 of the things one has to be careful about in looking at
10 these actuality tapes is that they are, I believe, a
11 combination of what is left of the films of two
12 separate crews. It is not always possible to
13 distinguish which crew took which film.
14 In any event, from the spot where he was,
15 that is to say in the Harvey Street side of the
16 junction, he saw troops deploying across the open space
17 and I think that the very last shot we saw, briefly saw
18 a moment ago is the film of the troops.
19 LORD SAVILLE: When you say the open place,
20 do you mean --
21 MR CLARKE: I mean the wasteground.
22 If we go to Day 1, page 42C of the Widgery
23 transcript, he was asked about that at the time of the
24 Widgery Inquiry. At C, having referring to the
25 Paratroopers taking up positions in Chamberlain Street,
1 the film of which we have just seen, he was asked at C
2 this:
3 "Question: Could you see any other
4 Paratroopers at that moment besides the ones you
5 described at the junction of Harvey Street, Eden Place
6 and Chamberlain Street?
7 Answer: Yes, we could see them deploying
8 across this open space here.
9 Question: That is the open space covered by
10 Eden Place and Pilot Row?
11 Answer: Yes, the open space in front of the
12 flats, and we actually could see and we did film some
13 Paratroopers over at this side here.
14 Question: That is to the west side of
15 Rossville Street?
16 Answer: Yes."
17 I am not quite sure precisely what he is
18 referring to there. We have seen, in the very small
19 portion of the clip we have just looked at, soldiers
20 deploying in the wasteground on the east side of
21 Rossville Street and it is true that the camera carries
22 through in the end so that you can see in the far
23 distance the west side of Rossville Street, but at any
24 rate in the clip we have just looked at, we are seeing
25 soldiers deploying on the east side.
1 Lord Widgery says this:
2 "I am very interested in this juncture, so we
3 will have as much detail as we can.
4 Mr Read: What were the Paratroopers doing
5 when you say they were deploying?
6 Answer: You mean the ones on the street
7 corner?
8 Question: Forget them for the moment. The
9 ones you saw in that area which you say were
10 deploying?
11 Answer: They were running to take cover.
12 There were a couple of burnt out vehicles which were
13 being used as cover and there were some armoured
14 vehicles coming in. They were moving across open
15 ground in the way that Infantry do and they might be
16 shot at, I suppose."
17 That may be a corrupt transcript reference,
18 it may be what he said is "" the way Infantry do if
19 they might be shot at I suppose":
20 "Question: Was there any firing at that
21 time when you saw those soldiers deploying and those
22 vehicles moving the way you have described?
23 Answer: I could not say if there were any at
24 that precise moment, but there was a fairly constant
25 though intermittent firing.
1 Question: Could you see who was firing?
2 Answer: No.
3 Mr Read: Was there anybody else in that area
4 that you have described except soldiers?
5 Answer: No, except there were one or two
6 civilians in Chamberlain Street; there was a woman in
7 particular who kept shouting at the soldiers." That is
8 the lady we saw at the very end of the clip we just
9 looked at:
10 "Question: I will come back to that in
11 a moment, but in the area of Eden Place and Pilot Row
12 on the west side of Rossville Street, were there any
13 civilians there?
14 Answer: No, a little later I saw some
15 Knights of Malta," it looks as though there had become
16 some conventional confusion between east and west
17 because Eden Place and Pilot Row are actually on the
18 east side of Rossville Street, though they are in
19 a sense on the west side of Chamberlain Street which
20 was the particular area they were -- from which the
21 film was taken.
22 He then described in his evidence a woman
23 shouting at the soldiers and a voice saying "stop
24 firing", both of which can be seen and heard on the
25 actuality film and the appearance of Father Daly
1 leading the party carrying Jack Duddy.
2 As one would expect, Mr Cave, who was the
3 cameraman, gave an account to Lord Widgery which was to
4 similar effect. He too said there was a firing of
5 single shots but he did not know by whom. Then he saw
6 from Harvey Street soldiers in Rossville Street taking
7 up firing positions with their rifle to the shoulder
8 but he did not see anybody pull a trigger although he
9 heard quite a few single shots. It is not entirely
10 easy to relate the evidence about Lieutenant N firing
11 up Eden Place across Chamberlain Street to the evidence
12 of the two BBC cameramen. It may be that the
13 explanation is that everything that had happened in
14 relation to Lieutenant N had happened by the time that
15 these cameramen returned to the top of
16 Chamberlain Street, except that John Bierman's account
17 was of being at the William Street/Chamberlain Street
18 junction when there were still youths lobbing the odd
19 brick and then hearing someone say that the Paras are
20 in the Bogside. One would have thought that in those
21 circumstances, being in Chamberlain Street he might
22 have witnessed whatever happened in respect of
23 Lieutenant N, but in any event he did not. Quite what
24 the chronological sequence is, at the present escapes
25 me.
1 After they had filmed Father Daly coming up
2 Chamberlain Street, they made their way across the
3 wasteground and down Rossville Street towards the flats
4 and on the way they filmed bloodstains on the west side
5 of the barricade, a bloodstained handkerchief and a
6 pair of shoes. I think that appears on the actuality
7 film and they filmed bodies being carried into an
8 ambulance, a man on the south of block 2, a body under
9 a blanket with a man in his stockinged feet which is,
10 as it turns out, Bernard McGuigan, at which stage their
11 film was interrupted by shots which Mr Bierman told
12 Lord Widgery came from the William Street end of
13 Rossville Street which in his statement to the Tribunal
14 he suggests came from the area of Glenfada Park North
15 --Mr Cave said.
16 There was then an interview with Father Daly
17 which is also on the film, at the southwest corner of
18 the flats which was interrupted by -- the southwest
19 corner of block 2 which was interrupted by firing on
20 two occasions. They only managed to work it on the
21 third, or was it the fourth attempt.
22 Mr Cave told Lord Widgery that the firing
23 which interrupted the interview with Father Daly came
24 from the same direction as the firing that had
25 interrupted his filming the body under the blanket.
1 But in his statement to this Tribunal he suggested that
2 the firing may have come from the walls. If we look at
3 Widgery transcript, Day 1, page 55, we will see how he
4 puts it, at the second question after A he is asked
5 this:
6 "Question: Having taken that sequence, did
7 you then photograph a body under a blanket, the body of
8 a man in his stockinged feet?
9 Answer: Yes.
10 Question: Whilst you were taking that shot,
11 what happened?
12 Answer: Shots rang out and the crowd ran for
13 cover.
14 Question: I think, as we saw on the film,
15 you stood your ground for a little while longer?
16 Answer: Yes.
17 Question: Do you know where the shots came
18 from?
19 Answer: I believe they came from the William
20 Street end of Rossville Street."
21 Then he describes them as single shots. Then
22 he refers to a priest waving a handkerchief, which is
23 the late Father Mulvey. The second question after C,
24 he is asked:
25 "Question: And then did you attempt to
1 interview Father Daly, or to film Mr Bierman
2 interviewing Father Daly?
3 Answer: Yes, that is correct.
4 Question: Were you able to do that film?
5 Answer: No.
6 Question: What happened?
7 Answer: The first time we tried to do it
8 there was shooting and we had to dive for cover.
9 Question: Again, do you know where from?
10 Answer: Again from the same direction", that
11 is to say from the north.
12 If you look at M13, page 27 you will see that
13 at paragraph 19 he deals with photographing or coming
14 to the body covered by a blanket without shoes. He
15 then says, third line of paragraph 19:
16 "As the priest came out from behind the
17 ambulance, firing started again. People then ran for
18 cover except one man who crouched over the body with
19 his arms outstretched." We have seen that in the
20 actuality film.
21 LORD SAVILLE: Would it be possible to see
22 the point marked G?
23 MR CLARKE: M13.29. The body is in fact the
24 body of Bernard McGuigan. It is marked there at point
25 G as being just below block 2. Looking at the
1 photographs that is a little inaccurate, not much. The
2 body of Bernard McGuigan, as it appears in the
3 photographs, is somewhere to the south of block 1.
4 There is a telephone box to the south of block 1 and
5 the body appears in a number of photographs a little
6 more to the southwest.
7 If one goes back to N13.27, at paragraph 20
8 he says:
9 "The priest then came out again and the
10 firing stopped. Two or three people lifted another
11 body which had been lying near by the one that was at
12 point G into the ambulance. The ambulance into which
13 this body had been loaded then drove off and another
14 one came along to replace it.
15 "21: Firing then started from the Glenfada
16 Park North area. I think that this firing was aimed at
17 the crowd standing by the southwest side of block 2 of
18 the Rossville flats."
19 So he is talking about firing from the north
20 at that stage. Paragraph 22 he deals with Father
21 Daly's appearance on the scene:
22 "John Bierman asked him for an interview.
23 I raised my camera to focus on Bierman and Father Daly
24 who was standing at the point marked H".
25 At M13.29, going back to the map, he marks
1 point H as to the south of block 2. If we then go back
2 to M13.27, paragraph 22 he says:
3 "I raised my camera to focus on Bierman and
4 Father Daly who were standing at the point marked H
5 when firing broke out again. Everyone took cover. The
6 firing was coming from behind where I was standing at
7 this point, that is, from the direction of the city
8 walls. It could not have come from the Kells Walk area
9 of Rossville Street.
10 "23: We tried to interview Daly three times
11 but were interrupted by gunfire on each occasion. The
12 firing was from a high powered gun and came from the
13 direction of the city walls. My impression was that
14 this firing was intended to disrupt the crowd rather
15 than to hit anyone. On the fourth attempt we managed
16 to complete the interview without interruption."
17 That is what he says in his statement to this
18 Tribunal which is different from what he said to
19 Lord Widgery. That is BBC crew number 1.
20 The second crew consisted of a reporter who,
21 for the moment I will call observer A. Peter Beggin,
22 the cameraman who is now no longer alive and William
23 Hunter, the sound recordist, they were a crew
24 originally behind barrier 14 and they went through
25 barrier 14 with C Company. As we have seen on the
1 actuality footage we looked at a moment ago, they took
2 pictures, initially at any rate from behind, and
3 watched and filmed C Company go along William Street or
4 take positions on the corner of Chamberlain Street and
5 William Street. Mr Beggin's evidence was that he then
6 filmed various arrested persons being searched against
7 a wall at the corner of Chamberlain Street and William
8 Street, though I have not been able to find on the
9 video of the actuality footage a film which shows that,
10 or a portion of film which shows that.
11 He then after that, according to his evidence
12 which appears at Widgery transcript Day 2, page 5 --
13 just before he did that, according to his evidence at
14 Day 5, he heard a couple of shots. That appears at the
15 first question:
16 "Question: Just before you took that piece
17 of film," what was being referred to was the film of
18 being arrested:
19 " ... did you hear something?
20 Answer: Yes, I heard a couple of shots.
21 Question: Were you able to tell what sort of
22 shots they were?
23 Answer: I was of the opinion that they were
24 of rifle shots of some sort or another rather than
25 baton rounds or small calibre rounds.
1 Question: Had you heard any gunshots apart
2 from baton rounds up to that point?
3 Answer: No.
4 Question: After you heard those two shots
5 did you notice a difference in the way the soldier were
6 moving?
7 Answer: Yes.
8 Question: What was that?
9 Answer: They became very much more alert,
10 wary. They had changed from a fairly easy going
11 attitude to one of caution and one of wariness and one
12 of careful observation and taking up cover."
13 He then says that he saw some Armoured
14 Personnel Carriers go through the barricade. It is not
15 completely apparent, simply from reading this passage
16 from the transcript, what soldiers he is there
17 referring to who became more alert and changed from an
18 attitude of caution to one of careful observation and
19 taking up cover, but it must I think logically be the
20 soldiers of C Company who were in Chamberlain Street.
21 That does not, I think, tell us anything about what was
22 happening in the wasteground or in Rossville Street.
23 If we go to the top of this page, the bottom of what
24 appears on the screen, he said that he saw soldiers
25 dismount and some of them remain:
1 "Question: Where were you when you were
2 watching?
3 Answer: At the junction of William Street
4 and Chamberlain Street.
5 Question: The paratroops who dismounted, as
6 we know, moved across the open ground towards the
7 Rossville flats?
8 Answer: That is correct."
9 This may be an example of the occasional
10 unhelpfulness of leading questions because he was being
11 asked whether he saw -- he is asked at C whether he saw
12 some Armoured Personnel Carriers go through the
13 barricade, which is barrier 14. He says yes: "They
14 came from behind me and passed me as I was standing on
15 the corner of Chamberlain Street mind.
16 The next question is:
17 "Did you see the soldiers in them dismount?
18 Answer: Yes, some of them dismounted."
19 That is at a time, as appears from the next
20 question, when he was at the junction of William Street
21 and Chamberlain Street. The only soldiers he could
22 have seen dismounting from an advantage point at the
23 junction of Chamberlain Street and William Street were
24 soldiers either in Chamberlain Street or William
25 Street. Indeed, one can see in the actuality film one
1 Pig going down Chamberlain Street. One can see in,
2 I think the BBC footage, a Pig going through -- one can
3 see individual troops going in on foot through barrier
4 14. One can see an empty Pig going through barrier 14,
5 which may be the Pig in which the troops who went in on
6 foot originally were and one can also see four, I think
7 at least, Pigs drive into William Street, stop and a
8 whole lot of soldiers outside them. That would
9 constitute soldiers dismounting at a spot which could
10 be viewed from the junction of William and
11 Chamberlain Street. That is slightly difficult to fit
12 in precisely with the next question at D:
13 "Question: The Paratroops who dismounted,
14 as we know, moved across the open ground towards the
15 Rossville flats?
16 Answer: That is correct." I suppose that is
17 intended to mean a reference to C Company who were not
18 principally concerned, if concerned at all, in moving
19 across the open ground toward the Rossville flats. He
20 is then asked this:
21 "Question: Were you able to see that
22 clearly?
23 Answer: Yes.
24 Question: When they did that were there any
25 civilians in the immediate area?
1 Answer: No, the area was substantially
2 empty. There were a few possibly at the distant end,
3 but it was a substantially empty area.
4 Lord Widgery: What area are we speaking of
5 now? You are standing on the corner of William Street
6 and Chamberlain Street?"
7 Lord Widgery having spotted that you cannot
8 see the wasteland from the corner of William Street and
9 Chamberlain Street:
10 "Answer: Yes.
11 Question: What is the area you say was
12 substantially free of civilians?
13 Answer: At this point I was through and
14 looking towards that area.
15 Question: You were on the other side of the
16 houses in Chamberlain Street?
17 Answer: Yes.
18 Question: Looking out over the open area by
19 Eden Place?
20 Answer: Yes.
21 Question: Looking towards Rossville flats?
22 Answer: Yes."
23 So at some stage he has moved from the corner
24 of William Street and Chamberlain Street to the west
25 hand side of Chamberlain Street looking over on to the
1 wasteland.
2 "Lord Widgery: What is the area you said was
3 empty - the whole of that area we see on the model?
4 Answer: I did not advance very far into it,
5 but this area was at the time the troops moved into it
6 fairly empty and people had obviously gone through the
7 back.
8 Mr Preston: As you watched the soldiers move
9 over that open ground, Mr Beggin, did you hear any
10 shots fired?
11 Answer: Yes, they had got quite a long way
12 into the open ground before any shots were fired.
13 Question: How many did you hear?
14 Answer: Three or four.
15 Question: So far as you could see were they
16 fired by the soldiers whom you were watching?
17 Answer: No, they did not appear to be. The
18 soldiers scattered very slightly, but they did not
19 appear to fire at that time.
20 Question: Did you have any impression as to
21 where those shots had come from?
22 Answer: I assumed, without seeing the
23 individual who fired them, that they had come from the
24 direction of the flats.
25 Question: You say that the soldiers
1 scattered a bit?
2 Answer: Yes."
3 By some route, possibly down Macari's Lane he
4 got into a position where he could see soldiers moving
5 over the wasteground and obtained the impression that
6 is described in that statement. At this point,
7 unhappily, as paragraph 9 of his statement to
8 Lord Widgery reveals, they ran out of film.
9 There were other photographers who had a view
10 of what was going on. One of them was Mr JP Morris of
11 the Daily Mail who took pictures of rioters at
12 barricade number 14 and then moved there to barricade
13 number 12 in Little James Street, then to barricade
14 number 13 in Sackville Street, then up Harvey Street
15 towards the barricade at Butcher's Gate because what he
16 was trying to do was to get to the Army side of the
17 barricade. He could not do that so he went back to
18 Chamberlain Street where he began to take a series of
19 photographs. If we look at EP23 one of the photographs
20 that he took is this one and it shows youths behind the
21 corrugated shield. If we go to 3A, he took another one
22 in the same spot.
23 He was then affected by gas and went into an
24 alleyway off William Street. It is not quite clear
25 which one, in order to find somewhere where the gas was
1 not so strong. When he was there he looked back and he
2 saw the APCs and the four tonne vehicles cross William
3 Street from Little James Street. He then ran down
4 Macari's Lane and when he got to the wasteground saw a
5 lot of Paratroopers across the open ground and chasing
6 a crowd of people. If we look at Widgery transcript,
7 Day 2, page 36F, he was asked this:
8 "Question: Can you give us any idea of the
9 size of the crowd? Was it hundreds or thousands or
10 tens?
11 Answer: I only saw it for a split second.
12 There were packs of people running and the Paratroopers
13 were running out in pairs and as they got someone, came
14 across them, they hit them with the rifle, knocked them
15 to the ground, kicked them and then left them and ran
16 on after another.
17 "Mr Stocker: That might be the point to ask
18 you this: at this stage did you manage to photograph
19 that happening at all?
20 Answer: No, sir, because at that time
21 I myself was seized by two Paratroopers."
22 What happened according to his evidence was
23 that he had got himself covered with dye on his
24 shoulder and had a face mask which he pulled down round
25 his throat. He also had three 35 millimetre
1 professional cameras around his neck. As he came round
2 the corner of Macari's Lane as it leads into the
3 wasteground, he was faced, he says, by two Paratroopers
4 who put him against a wall. The first Paratrooper
5 whose face he described as blackened held him under or
6 by the arm and leaned him against the wall. A second
7 Para with a rifle put it across his neck and held him
8 at the wall. He then said "press, Daily Mail" went for
9 his press card in his right hand pocket. The second
10 Paratrooper then put his knee up. Mr Morris struggled
11 out of the way but was caught on the thigh by the knee
12 and his press card slipped out and at that moment a man
13 ran in the direction of Eden Place from the wasteland.
14 The first Paratrooper said "get that bastard there" and
15 the second Paratrooper, the one who put his rifle
16 across Mr Morris's neck, left him and accosted the
17 running man. Mr Morris then took the photograph that
18 appears at EP2.4. This photograph shows the
19 Paratrooper with the rifle who had previously been with
20 his rifle across Mr Morris's neck, dealing with the man
21 who ran in the direction of Eden Place. This
22 photograph, according to Mr Morris's evidence, was
23 taken whilst he himself was being held by the first
24 Paratrooper to whom he was referring whose face was
25 blackened. According to his evidence, the accosted man
1 who we here see in the photograph was then hit on the
2 side of the face by the Paratrooper with a rifle butt,
3 and Mr Morris then fell down before the Paratrooper in
4 the left side of the photograph, having been thrown to
5 the ground by the Paratrooper who was holding him at
6 the time when he took the photograph.
7 Then, according to his evidence, the
8 Paratrooper on the left of the photograph who is almost
9 certainly soldier N, fired two rifle shots up the
10 alleyway that leads towards Harvey Street, having gone
11 down into a squatting position. Those, according to
12 Mr Morris, were the first rifle shots which he heard on
13 the day.
14 After all that he took cover at the front of
15 the burnt out van, the Bedford van which we can see in
16 the right-hand side of the photograph, lying down on
17 the ground as near to it as he could get. He then had
18 a feeling that he had been kicked which he attributed
19 to a ricocheting rubber bullet. He heard a lot of
20 firing from the Rossville Street area and from this
21 point of refuge he ran out to pick up the press card
22 that he had dropped, turned round and saw a youth
23 running in the wasteground and heard him being
24 challenged by an officer to stop twice. Then a
25 Paratrooper was sent from one of the three tonne
1 lorries to collect him, but according to Mr Morris,
2 another Paratrooper then came behind the boy from the
3 Rossville flats, hit him with a rifle on the head and
4 the boy went down on his knees, whereupon the two
5 Paratroopers, the one that had come from the flats and
6 the one that had come from the north, dragged the boy
7 to the armoured vehicle which is parked in the position
8 shown in the next photograph which Mr Morris took at
9 EP2.5 -- he took the photograph at EP2.5, he said,
10 whilst he himself was running towards the boy who we
11 can see being man handled by a Paratrooper.
12 EP2.6 there is the next picture in the
13 sequence which shows two Paratroopers manhandling the
14 boy and at EP2.7, we can see two Paratroopers hauling
15 the boy off to what is the command vehicle parked
16 between Eden Place and Pilot Row.
17 Having taken those photographs he then turned
18 in a southerly direction and took EP2.8, which is a
19 photograph we have seen before and will see several
20 times again. He said that whilst -- he turned to take
21 this photograph having heard a lot of shooting. He
22 said that the soldier fourth from the left, which
23 I take him to mean as the soldier with the hat on, with
24 the helmet on, fired first and then the soldier on the
25 left of the photograph who is probably soldier L.
1 Mr Morris said that at a later stage he found a lot of
2 empty cartridge shells and one live one there.
3 He said in cross-examination that he did not
4 see any signs of people having been shot at the
5 barricade and he did not know whether anyone had gone
6 behind Glenfada Park. After he had taken this
7 photograph he went back to the four tonners further up
8 Rossville Street and he took photograph EP2B. It is
9 conceivable that it has been added on as EP2.22. EP2B
10 is quite an interesting photograph. I wonder if we
11 could look at it in hard copy. Do you have at the
12 beginning of EP2, photographs A and B?
13 EP2B shows some soldiers at the north end of
14 Kells Walk running swiftly towards the north end of
15 Kells Walk and it shows the arrangements of the north
16 of that building, namely that there is a stairway up
17 which leads on to the first floor level.
18 There is also photograph EP2A which I think
19 must have been taken at the same time, which also shows
20 some soldiers at the north of the Kells Walk -- forget
21 that I may be wrong about that, I am not quite sure
22 what EP2A does know. After he had taken EP2B he then
23 took a series of photographs which begin at EP2.9
24 because he moved further up Rossville Street. He then
25 took some more photographs beginning at the top of
1 Rossville Street. It took me some time to work out
2 where this is, but this is the west pavement of
3 Rossville Street at the northern end, and William
4 Street is the street that appears where the arrow that
5 I have put on the screen is. These are a series of
6 people who have been arrested, against the wall at the
7 very northern end of Rossville Street.
8 Then he must have gone on in a southerly
9 direction because, if we look at EP2.10, he took a
10 photograph of people -- a number of photographs -- of
11 people who had been arrested against a wall of
12 Columbcille Court. This is, if we could have Q8 on the
13 screen, these photographs are of people approximately
14 in the position that I am marking by the arrow on the
15 screen, that is to say on the east side of
16 Columbcille Court, in the area to the west of
17 Kells Walk the building.
18 If we go to EP2.11, he saw them being marched
19 off in a northerly direction. EP2.12 shows them having
20 reached the north of the car park behind Kells Walk the
21 building. He then went to the very south of block 2
22 and took some photographs of bodies there.
23 LORD SAVILLE: If you go back to 12, that
24 might prompt us to discover where 2A is because if you
25 look at the broken wall, it looks the same.
1 MR CLARKE: It does look very much the same,
2 so maybe my first thoughts were correct. If we could
3 have 2A back on the screen, I can see how I have become
4 disorientated. What we are seeing is this: on the
5 right hand side of the photograph is Kells Walk, the
6 building, and one can see that the back wall on the
7 west side of the yards of the Kells Walk building, and
8 so these are soldiers looking in a westerly direction,
9 in the case of one of them running in a westerly
10 direction.
11 LORD GIFFORD: Sir, while we are on it, it
12 might be helpful to point out that according to the
13 contacts, the picture of the running soldier at EP2B is
14 taken before the picture of the standing soldiers at
15 the EP8 and that the next picture on the front there is
16 EP2A. That emerges from the contact which are --
17 LORD SAVILLE: Say again the sequence you are
18 suggesting.
19 LORD GIFFORD: The sequence is EP2B; EP8 and
20 EP2A in that is taken one after the other on that
21 film. So that the running soldier was taken before the
22 four standing soldiers.
23 LORD SAVILLE: You may well be right,
24 Lord Gifford, but why do you say that?
25 LORD GIFFORD: Only because my learned friend
1 had put the order in reverse and since he was putting
2 some photographs, as I regard the photographs
3 significant, I thought it wise to point out that the
4 order was as the context indicates as I have just said.
5 MR CLARKE: My learned friend is quite right
6 in relation to the contacts. I think the sequence that
7 I had -- the reason why I had taken the sequence that
8 I have was because it was the sequence -- I know what
9 has happened. The order in the contact sheet is
10 precisely as my learned friend helpfully describes.
11 The first photograph in this sequence that he took is
12 EP2B. The second photograph that he took, according to
13 contact sheet immediately thereafter, is EP2.8. The
14 next one that he took is EP2.A. When he came to give
15 evidence he referred to taking one of these photographs
16 which we now know to be EP2.A, after he had taken
17 photograph EP2.8. What he did not deal with in
18 evidence was having taken a very similar photograph
19 immediately before EP2.8, hence the source of my
20 confusion. But the contact sheet makes it abundantly
21 plain that the order is as my learned friend has
22 stated.
23 LORD SAVILLE: Could you just, in order to
24 help me, identify on the map what we are looking at on
25 2.B?
1 MR CLARKE: Can we have 2.B on the screen?
2 What we are looking at is soldiers running towards the
3 north of the Kells Walk. So if we have Q8 on the
4 screen, the soldiers are running towards that spot.
5 There is, to the north of Kells Walk the building, a
6 stairway which leads up to the first floor. If we go
7 back to EP2B, that is the stairway there. Kells Walk
8 the street leads in the direction that I am pointing to
9 with the arrow.
10 LORD SAVILLE: Can you do the same for my
11 assistance with 2A?
12 MR CLARKE: Yes. 2A, that is a soldier who
13 has come out of -- if we focus on that soldier there,
14 if we look at Q8 again. That soldier who is running is
15 in approximately the spot that I have endeavoured to
16 highlight there, that is to say, he has run through
17 this area so as to come out into the properly paved
18 area which is, in effect, part of the road that extends
19 -- the properly paved area is that which I have
20 marked, it is the car park of Kells Walk which leads
21 into Kells Walk, the street which leads into
22 Abbey Street, that is all as it were a proper road.
23 Then slightly raised above the car park is the little
24 alley that leads from Rossville Street into Kells Walk,
25 the street proper. The soldier in question is poised
1 in effect at what was showed a moment ago.
2 LORD SAVILLE: We are looking in which
3 direction when we are looking at the photograph 2A?
4 MR CLARKE: When we are looking at photograph
5 2A, we are looking, we and the photographer are looking
6 due north at a soldier who is running approximately due
7 west.
8 LORD SAVILLE: Running along Kells Walk
9 street, in effect?
10 MR CLARKE: His right foot is about to go on
11 to Kells Walk street, his left foot is on the pavement
12 between Kells Walk, the street proper, and the
13 northeast end of the Kells Walk building.
14 LORD SAVILLE: Yes.
15 MR HOYT: It is a walkway, not a driveway.
16 MR CLARKE: It is a walkway, not a driveway,
17 that is a better way of putting it.
18 I wonder whether that might be a convenient
19 break?
20 LORD SAVILLE: Yes. 1.00.
21 (12.05 pm)
22 The luncheon adjournment
23 (1.00 pm)
24 MR CLARKE: Three points: we have now
25 established that the order of the photographs taken
1 by --
2 LORD SAVILLE: I am going to interrupt you
3 for a moment, I understand Mr Mansfield wanted to raise
4 a point that has been described to me, Mr Mansfield, as
5 a timetabling point, correctly or otherwise.
6 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, sir, it is timetabling,
7 but it raises some points of concern in relation to
8 material that has not yet been received, a couple of
9 statements and so forth, and what bearing that may have
10 on the projected timetable that you have in mind.
11 I can either deal with it now, or I was going to
12 suggest perhaps ten to 3.
13 LORD SAVILLE: If it is convenient to you
14 I would rather deal with it now, because I have to get
15 away promptly at 3.00 and I would not want to stop you
16 in mid flow. At the same time, if you were shorter
17 than ten minutes, we might waste five minutes. If it
18 is convenient to you, can we deal with it now?
19 MR MANSFIELD: Certainly. May I start with
20 the question of the venue applications. I appreciate
21 the date that has been set is not set in stone and it
22 may have to vary, but is 12th June. The original
23 proposition, which I think I raised just before Easter,
24 was that we would be provided with threat assessments
25 and then those who were essentially arguing for
1 a change of venue in the sense of wanting the
2 proceedings for soldiers to take place elsewhere, to
3 make known what their arguments were and then we would
4 reply to the particular points being made rather than
5 doing it at large. As I understood it that was agreed
6 as a procedure.
7 At the moment we do not have the threat
8 assessments. I do not know what the present position
9 is, as to whether they are about to be delivered or
10 whether it is next week after certain events after this
11 weekend, or what the position is. I think all of us
12 would be helped by clarification about the dates,
13 because the 30th is plainly looming quite soon and at
14 the moment it appears threat assessments certainly are
15 not (indistinguishable) today and they may therefore
16 not be arriving until next week. Then those who wish
17 to base their arguments on those threat assessments
18 have to reply to that and so forth. I raise it now in
19 the sense, that could we at least be alerted as to what
20 the current situation is as to when we may receive
21 threat assessments, or the fresh ones. That is one
22 area.
23 LORD SAVILLE: Can I deal with that
24 straightaway? We, that is to say the Tribunal, have
25 become increasingly restive about this delay with
1 regard to security assessments. One of the reasons
2 that time has apparently been (indistinguishable) is
3 because the Tribunal indicated that it wanted the
4 assessments to be in a form in which the one could be
5 compared with the other, that is in effect to say with
6 the English security authorities, because otherwise if
7 they were using different language or different
8 conventions it might be very difficult, if not
9 impossible to make any real sense out of them.
10 We put that point up to the security
11 organisations concerned many weeks ago. We have since
12 received a number of promises of estimated times of
13 delivery. The latest is that these assessments will be
14 delivered tomorrow. Bearing in mind the track record,
15 I cannot possibly suggest that is a warranted date but
16 you may be assured that the Tribunal has made it quite
17 clear it does require these assessments as a matter of
18 the highest priority in order not to delay the
19 proceedings of the Tribunal.
20 It may be they will be available tomorrow,
21 I very much hope so, and if they are not I shall try
22 and give a more up-to-date report early next week.
23 I am not sure we can take it very much further than
24 that at the moment.
25 MR MANSFIELD: Save that if you are happy to
1 reinforce the almost unspoken agreement there was, that
2 those who represent military personnel will kindly
3 provide us with their response to those threat
4 assessments or how they intend to incorporate them or
5 what their arguments are and then we would respond to
6 those --
7 LORD SAVILLE: I may be corrected, but my
8 impression was that which you have stated, namely, that
9 those who wish for the soldiers' evidence to be given
10 elsewhere than in this city would in effect make the
11 running or the submissions, including those, if any,
12 based on any threat assessments we receive. There
13 would then be an opportunity for response to that and
14 then we would hear the matter out orally, at, I still
15 hope, some stage during the week of 12th June.
16 MR MANSFIELD: With regard to that just
17 a small point: if in fact, as it appears, the opening
18 will still be progressing at that point, is it intended
19 to, as it were, have an interval in the opening?
20 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, it is.
21 MR MANSFIELD: May I raise one other matter,
22 that is this: we have also had indicated that you would
23 want, prior to any other person opening, a submission
24 indicating why anyone else would and what would be the
25 basis of the opening by anyone else. Part of that
1 plainly relates to material that we still do not have,
2 and I would ask that if in fact we are to be requested
3 in those terms, namely on what basis do you want to
4 make an opening and what do you want to refer to, we
5 would require as soon as possible because certainly
6 those who, as far as I know, represent, again military
7 personnel have them, we still do not have the lettered
8 soldiers' statements to the Inquiry. They are very key
9 people obviously, those who are still alive.
10 In addition to that, of course, the most
11 obvious person who has been mentioned in passing, but
12 is still alive who is not lettered, is
13 Colonel Wilford. We have had other material in the
14 temporary documents relating to other senior officers,
15 but nothing from him. Although it is fair to say
16 obviously we are listening with great interest to the
17 opening, in fact if we are going to start planning what
18 may be incorporated into openings and how that fits
19 into a jigsaw of a different kind to the one that is
20 being placed before you at the moment, that material
21 could be provided, even if it is not signed at this
22 moment. Could we please be perhaps helpfully told what
23 the present situation is with regard to soldiers'
24 statements who exist that have not signed them, or
25 whether they have signed them and we are about to get
1 them or what the position is?
2 LORD SAVILLE: I cannot give you the most
3 up-to-date position at the moment. I will ask
4 Mr Clarke if it is convenient for him to make some
5 inquiries and perhaps on Monday morning to give an
6 up-to-date position. What I can do is to assure you
7 and indeed everybody else, as far as the Inquiry team
8 are concerned, we are bending over backwards to get
9 this material in and distributed the moment we get it
10 ourselves.
11 It will be appreciated, I hope by all, that
12 our powers to require this material are in effect very
13 limited, because they are limited to subpoenaing people
14 and documents, if we have to go that far, so we do rely
15 on the goodwill and cooperation of everybody in sight
16 to provide the material at the earliest possible
17 moment. Having said that, I repeat, we have done the
18 best we can; we are continuing to do the best we can
19 and I do not think it is any delay that could be
20 attributed to the Tribunal or its staff or
21 Messrs Eversheds that is causing delay.
22 So far as the opening statements by others
23 are concerned, we set out in our opening statement some
24 two years ago that we would require some advance form
25 of notice as to the particular areas and aspects that
1 were intended to be covered by any opening address by
2 any of the interested parties. The reason for that
3 direction was because we must make sure that everything
4 is directed to the object of the Inquiry, which is to
5 discover the truth about Bloody Sunday. The sort of
6 thing we are thinking of at the moment is not, of
7 course, a full-scale written out speech that is to be
8 delivered, but more something rather more along the
9 lines of a synopsis of the particular points which each
10 interested party wish to draw to the attention of the
11 Tribunal at this stage.
12 Clearly there will have to be a considerable
13 amount of co-operation between the interested parties,
14 in the sense of the families of those who died and of
15 the wounded, in order to avoid duplication of effort
16 and waste of time. We are not going to require,
17 I repeat, a full written statement of what is going to
18 be said to the Tribunal; again I repeat, more in the
19 nature of a synopsis.
20 I quite understand that if you have not got
21 all the material, the synopsis may well not be
22 complete. There is another factor comes into play at
23 that stage, which is that we really now must get on as
24 best we can and it may be that we will have to consider
25 some other form of dealing with the matter so far as
1 the interested parties are concerned, if they feel they
2 cannot provide a full synopsis of what they want to say
3 at this stage.
4 Any such opening statements are obviously not
5 in any view going to be given until September of this
6 year, so we have a bit more time, because I envisage
7 that Mr Clarke's opening address is going to take us up
8 to round about the end of June.
9 The position is not, of course, as
10 satisfactory as it might be, because in the best of all
11 possible worlds we would have got all the material in
12 before we even started; unfortunately we do not live in
13 a perfect world, we have done the best we can and will
14 continue to do so.
15 I can assure you, Mr Mansfield, and indeed
16 all the interested parties, that at some stage at least
17 everybody will be given an opportunity to say
18 everything that can properly be said in the context of
19 this Inquiry to the Tribunal.
20 MR MANSFIELD: We are very grateful for
21 that. May I indicate that those of us who represent
22 the families are aware of obligations to the Tribunal
23 and also aware of the fact you would not want to hear
24 the same points put several different ways by different
25 counsel and we are intending to have a joint meeting
1 next week in order to ensure that there is, as far as
2 is humanly possible, no duplication.
3 LORD SAVILLE: I am glad to hear that and
4 I am perfectly confident we will be able to achieve
5 other openings which will be of real assistance to the
6 Tribunal.
7 I repeat -- I am sorry to say so three times
8 -- we really are doing our very best to obtain what
9 you have correctly identified as very important
10 material as soon as we possibly can, and the moment we
11 get it, we will distribute it.
12 One of the problems Mr Hoyt has reminded me
13 has caused delay and will continue to cause delay is
14 this problem of redactions, because it is very time
15 consuming to check these documents. We have a system
16 which requires them to be read independently by a
17 number of people. You can see from the amount of
18 material we have gathered at the moment this is a
19 dreadfully time-consuming exercise. That is one of the
20 reasons for, but not the sole reason, for delay in
21 producing documents.
22 Mr Clarke, I wonder if it would be possible
23 for you to give us an up-to-date report on Monday
24 morning?
25 MR CLARKE: I think so, I am sure we can give
1 some form of report. The position is of course
2 particularly complicated because there are some
3 witnesses who have not returned their statements; there
4 are some witnesses whose statements are under
5 amendment; there are some witnesses whose statements
6 have been approved but not signed; there are some that
7 have been approved and signed but not redacted; there
8 are some that have been approved, signed and redacted
9 but are in the process of being photocopied 40 times.
10 As you have seen, we have endeavoured to -- when we
11 have them -- get the most important ones and put them
12 in a temporary bundle, although that is slightly
13 unsatisfactory. I will give a more accurate report of
14 where we have got to on Monday morning, or thereabouts.
15 We had established before the break that the
16 order of Mr Morris's photographs was EP2B, 2.8, 2A and
17 2.9. I have discovered the fact that caused me to give
18 a different order, which was that at Day 2, page 52F,
19 Mr Morris's evidence to Lord Widgery, was that
20 photograph 2B was taken before photograph 9, as indeed
21 it was in a sense, but not immediately before. It was
22 taken before photograph 2.8 and 2A as well.
23 Secondly, the soldiers that we see in
24 photographs 2B and 2A are soldiers from a Platoon
25 which, speaking for myself, I do not presently know.
1 I do not know where they come from or indeed what they
2 were doing at the moment that they were photographed.
3 Thirdly, we have been looking at the plans
4 and the photographs that I have been discussing. If we
5 could have the virtual reality chart up on the screen,
6 we can perhaps finish the matter off, because the
7 Kells Walk building survives today. If we go to hot
8 spot 4, you will find, looking from the west side, the
9 back of the stairway that leads up to the first floor
10 level. What appears on the left by the curved wall is,
11 I think -- certainly the house behind it is modern --
12 but Kells Walk, the building itself is as it was at the
13 time. One can see the wooden fencing at the back of
14 the Kells Walk houses. Indeed one can see the lamppost
15 that appears in the photograph. One can see the
16 walkway and then the roadway, the cars are of course
17 modern, and then the roadway behind Kells Walk,
18 Columbcille Court with the garages in front of it. The
19 roadway itself, Kells Walk the street, with
20 Columbcille Court behind it, extending out towards the
21 west.
22 I was dealing with the position of
23 Mr Morris. After he had taken the photographs that we
24 were considering, he went down to the south of block 2
25 and he took some photographs that we need not presently
1 look at, which are at EP2.13 and 14, of a body which we
2 now know to be that of Bernard McGuigan, covered by
3 a blanket.
4 He then took some further photographs. One
5 is at EP2.15, which is I think a photograph of Hugh
6 Gilmore being helped into an ambulance. He then took
7 EP2.16, which is I think a photograph of Patrick
8 McDaid, the young man who was wounded by a glancing
9 wound to the shoulder, being helped into an ambulance
10 by a Knight of Malta, Noel McLoone. He arrived just as
11 one ambulance was leaving and on his evidence, just as
12 they had started loading up the second, firing started
13 and everyone threw themselves to the ground.
14 If we look at EP2.17, he took a photograph of
15 that. You can see an ambulance to the south of block 2
16 facing in a southerly direction and a man sitting on
17 the ground and I think probably a Knight of Malta and
18 others prone on the ground in Rossville Street itself
19 with the late Father Mulvey and others at the south of
20 the ambulance.
21 He progressed up the street, that is to say
22 he progressed in a westerly direction in front of block
23 2, taking photographs, as appears at EP2.18, the next
24 photograph in the sequence. EP2.19 shows Father
25 Mulvey, now at the north side of the ambulance, facing
1 in a northerly direction and waving a white
2 handkerchief.
3 Mr Morris could not tell where the firing was
4 coming from, but he said that it appeared to him to be
5 coming from two directions. If you look at Day 2, page
6 54G, at the second half of the page, he was asked this,
7 last question but one:
8 "Mr Stocker: From which direction did you
9 think that firing was coming?
10 Answer: I could not tell, it was just
11 shooting. I could not see the troops. You could hear
12 the gunfire coming there. There also appeared to be
13 gunfire coming from this direction.
14 Question: From there, northwards?
15 Answer: Yes. I could not actually say it
16 was cross-fire because I would not know, but there
17 seemed to be a lot of shooting coming from this
18 direction and there were also shots coming from down
19 here."
20 The top of the next page:
21 "Question: Which came first?
22 Answer: I do not know, because when you
23 suddenly hear a lot of gunfire, your first thought is
24 to throw yourself to the ground.
25 Question: How long did the shooting last?
1 Answer: I should say - again I cannot give
2 a definite time - it could have been half a minute,
3 could have been a minute, definitely could be no more.
4 There was a Father who was at first behind the
5 ambulance and he went towards the troops waving a white
6 hanky. He seemed to wave it for half a minute and then
7 the firing stopped and everything went quiet.
8 Question: You did get the impression that
9 whoever may have fired first, there were shots going in
10 both directions?
11 Answer: You could hear shots on the right
12 and shots on the left."
13 At page 66 in the same day, he was asked
14 questions by Mr Gibbens, the second half of the page.
15 He was asked at E:
16 "Question: You moved down to the corner
17 where the telephone was. And I gather from you that
18 when you saw injured being put into the ambulance there
19 was firing which seemed to be coming, quite a lot of
20 firing, from down by the direction of Free Derry
21 Corner?
22 Answer: There was a lot of shooting.
23 I presumed this afterwards because it was obvious that
24 they were not shooting at us, but at the time, with
25 dead people around and the shooting started, my first
1 thought was that it was from there, but it was not.
2 There was gunfire in this area, but the majority was at
3 this end" I cannot tell what "this" is in those
4 answers:
5 "Question: Some at any rate came from the
6 south, from Free Derry Corner?
7 Answer: It seemed to, yes.
8 Question: None of the fire landed in your
9 area. It did not hit anyone or any vehicle?
10 Answer: I did not see any bullets.
11 Question: So what you heard was merely the
12 sound of shots being fired without the shots arriving
13 in your vicinity?
14 Answer: Yes.
15 Question: And that is what alarmed you?
16 Answer: Yes, and it alarmed everyone.
17 Question: It was put to you by my learned
18 friend for the relatives that photograph number 17
19 shows that the people like the ambulance men and so on
20 were putting the ambulance between themselves and the
21 direction of the firing?
22 Answer: Yes.
23 Question: And that would be to the south?
24 Answer: Yes."
25 I do not quite know whether the antecedent of
1 that in that question was intended to be the people or
2 the firing.
3 LORD SAVILLE: The people were to the south
4 of the ambulance on photograph 17.
5 MR CLARKE: That is what I think, the
6 question was at any rate understood by the witness to
7 mean. But if the people were to the south, they were
8 only putting the ambulance between themselves and the
9 direction of the firing if the firing was to the
10 north. The question that Mr Gibbens had been referring
11 to, which he was harking back to at page 66, appears at
12 Day 2, page 61B, the top of the page, where he was
13 asked this, the second question:
14 "Question: If one looks at 17, which is
15 a bit further away from the ambulance, does that appear
16 to be Father Mulvey towards the front of the
17 ambulance?
18 Answer: Yes.
19 Question: On the extreme left behind some
20 men who are crouching down?
21 Answer: Yes.
22 Question: It is obvious those men are
23 crouching at the front of the ambulance" which was of
24 course facing south:
25 "... and putting the ambulance, as it were,
1 between themselves and something, whatever it is?
2 Answer: Yes."
3 That was a question designed to elicit the
4 fact, as it appears to have done, that they were
5 protecting themselves from firing from the north. When
6 you go back to page 66, when Mr Gibbens came to hark
7 back to that question, he says, having elicited the
8 information that the firing, some of it came from the
9 south, that is the question immediately above F. Then
10 for some reason at G, refers to what Mr McSparran had
11 asked:
12 "Question: It was put to you by my learned
13 friend for the relatives that photograph number 17
14 shows that the people, like the ambulance men and so
15 on, were putting the ambulance between themselves and
16 the direction of the firing?
17 Answer: Yes.
18 Question: And that would be to the south?
19 Answer: Yes."
20 I do not quite know what my learned friend
21 the late Mr Gibbens thought he had achieved or was
22 seeking to achieve or what response he had got if that
23 all that he was eliciting was that the ambulance men
24 were to the south of the ambulance, but never mind.
25 In cross-examination Mr Morris described
1 three separate incidents of pairs of Paratroopers
2 coming behind people, clubbing them over the head with
3 the flat of the rifle butt and as they went down almost
4 kicking them. At Day 2, page 57, he was asked this
5 question at A:
6 "Question: Were they clubbing them on the
7 head?
8 Answer: Over the head with the rifle butt.
9 Question: As they clubbed them and they fell
10 to the ground, did they kick them?
11 Answer: I saw the pair nearest to me
12 clubbing and kicking, and they ran on, and beyond them
13 there were another two chasing. Again he used his
14 rifle butt and he hit them. The group I saw was
15 opposite to me in that area there.
16 Question: It was the butt of the rifle being
17 used to strike these people on the head?
18 Answer: On the back."
19 Then he in effect says that the flat of the
20 butt was used to strike them on the head. At C he was
21 asked this question:
22 "Question: Did it appear to you at that
23 stage, Mr Morris, that these Paratroopers were in
24 a particularly aggressive and truculent mood? Would
25 that be a fair description?
1 Answer: I was not close enough to see that.
2 It looked organised to me. They were running in
3 pairs. It looked like a war film where you see a
4 bayonet charge without bayonets. They were running in
5 pairs and knocking persons down and making sure he was
6 down and running after someone else."
7 I then come to another BBC reporter,
8 David Capper, whose recordings we have heard earlier in
9 connection with sector 1. He was a BBC radio reporter
10 who, like other journalists, had been to
11 Columbcille Court with a view to seeing the two who
12 were wounded and had been taken there. He came back
13 eventually to the open ground and he gives a vivid
14 account of the entry of the armoured vehicles into the
15 Bogside. If we go to Day 2, page 69 at B, he was asked
16 this:
17 "Question: Did you then move out on to the
18 open ground and witness the crowd moving down
19 Rossville Street towards Free Derry Corner?
20 Answer: I did.
21 Question: Where did you then go?
22 Answer: I was standing in the middle of the
23 open space or round about where the open space is
24 marked."
25 In his statement to both tribunals, that is
1 to say both to Lord Widgery and to the present
2 Tribunal, he has indicated that he was by the back door
3 of a house in Chamberlain Street on the edge of the
4 wasteground. If we look at EP2.4, it may be that we
5 can see him in this photograph. It is possible that he
6 is the gentleman whom I am marking, that is to say the
7 man immediately to the left in the photograph of the
8 man who is walking in a northerly direction with his
9 hat on. I have forgotten, I am afraid, why I think
10 that may be so, but there is some basis for it which we
11 will rediscover in due course.
12 If we go back to transcript 2, page 69, at
13 the bottom of the page at F, he is asked, the second
14 question:
15 "Mr Preston: Did the soldiers dismount from
16 those vehicles?
17 Answer: Yes.
18 Question: After they had dismounted what did
19 they do?
20 Answer: They began firing.
21 Question: Are we still talking about two
22 vehicles that you remember or were there more?
23 Answer: There were two vehicles. Some
24 soldiers followed up on foot. I can remember Saracens
25 because one of them stopped directly after me and he
1 pulled round in such a way that the back door opened
2 and when the Paratroopers came out they were 15 to 20
3 feet from me.
4 Question: How many?
5 Answer: Half a dozen or so.
6 Question: You say they began firing
7 straightaway. What were they firing?
8 Answer: I thought they were firing rubber
9 bullets and CS gas.
10 Question: Could you see what weapons they
11 were holding in their hands? You said some of them
12 were very close to you.
13 Answer: Most of them to my recollection had
14 rifles and I felt they were using these to fire gas
15 cannisters that fit over the top."
16 Then he says he could not say that he saw
17 that, but that was his impression of what was going on,
18 that this was gas and rubber bullets that were being
19 used. He then said that he covered virtually all the
20 riots and knew the difference between a riot gun and
21 a rifle:
22 "Question: Were any of these soldiers who
23 dismounted in the place you have described using
24 rifles?
25 Answer: Yes.
1 Question: Did you actually see them firing
2 rifles, as distinct from holding them in a ready
3 position?
4 Answer: There were large reports going on
5 all round. I would look from one area to another and
6 hear a bang quite close and wing round and a soldier
7 would be putting down the gun. I cannot say that
8 I actually saw a soldier pick up a rifle, take aim and
9 fire.
10 Question: Did you have the impression that
11 there was gunfire from any other direction than the
12 places where you saw Paratroopers?
13 Answer: No indication that there was firing
14 from anywhere else.
15 Question: Could you see, if indeed your
16 impression that the Paratroopers were firing is a right
17 one, what they were aiming at, or even the general
18 direction of their aim?
19 Answer: The general direction was down
20 Rossville Street and I by this time had gone up against
21 the wall just about there at the back doorway."
22 He was at any rate at some stage at the back
23 door of somewhere which is presumably on the east side
24 of the wasteground at the back of the Chamberlain
25 Street houses. His answer goes on:
1 " ... there were a number of Paratroopers
2 along this wall as well and there were more in there
3 who were firing upwards into the flats, but most of
4 them were out about here and firing down out of my view
5 and I could not see what they were firing at.
6 Question: Do you remember a youth who was
7 standing near you, Mr Capper, request permission from
8 a soldier to cross the open ground?
9 Answer: Yes, he was in the corner of
10 Eden Place and there was a soldier there and I can
11 recall him saying something about 'All right to go?'
12 and I assumed he got permission because he started
13 running right across from the corner moving this way
14 and when he got about halfway across an officer with
15 a pistol, a drawn pistol, challenged him and said 'Halt
16 or I fire.' The youth did not stop and ran on about
17 another 15 feet. The officer challenged him once
18 more. The youth did stop and put his hands above his
19 head. A Paratrooper came up, an ordinary Private with
20 a rifle, and hit him on the side of the head and he
21 fell.
22 Question: At this stage, Mr Capper, what
23 were your own feelings? Were you alarmed or did you
24 feel yourself relatively safe?
25 Answer: I thought myself to be comparatively
1 safe because I could see no indication of any shots
2 coming in our direction. As I say, I was very close to
3 the soldiers. The ones around me were not taking any
4 cover. There was no ground being kicked up about them.
5 Question: Do you remember a particular group
6 of soldiers near to the block called Kells Walk?
7 Answer: Yes, there was a low wall just there
8 and some of them, about 15 to 20, were sheltering down
9 below this very low wall.
10 Question: Would you just look at this
11 photograph, Mr Capper. My Lord, it is Mr Morris's
12 photograph number 8", that is EP2.8.
13 "Answer: That is the one.
14 Question: That is the same group that you
15 saw?
16 Answer: There was a larger group when I saw
17 them. There was a larger number than that.
18 Question: Did you see any of those soldiers
19 fire?
20 Answer: Again it is hard to say I saw them
21 fire. I saw them with their rifles up. There were
22 reports going on all around me. I assume they were
23 firing, but I cannot say I saw --
24 Question: You saw them all emerge, but you
25 did not see them pull the trigger?
1 Answer: No, but then I was about 200 yards
2 away."
3 It looks rather, particularly with the
4 reference to there being a larger number at the wall at
5 the south of Kells Walk than appears on Mr Morris's
6 photograph number 8, EP2.8, that what Mr Capper may
7 have been witnessing was the arrival at the Kells Walk
8 wall of members of the Anti-Tank Platoon, who arrived
9 there first, as opposed to the soldiers that are shown
10 in photographs EP2.8, who are members of the
11 Composite Platoon and arrived subsequently, members of
12 the Anti-Tank Platoon, or at least some of them, having
13 gone into Glenfada Park.
14 So the tenor of this evidence is that so far
15 as he was concerned he heard a substantial quantity of
16 firing by soldiers which at the time he believed was
17 rubber bullets or gas, but which he believed afterwards
18 was in fact real, but saw no indication of shots coming
19 in.
20 At Day 2, page 73, he was asked this at the
21 bottom of the top of the page at D, just above D, the
22 question was asked:
23 "Question: And at this stage, Mr Capper,
24 were you conscious of any shots being directed towards
25 your position or towards where the soldiers were?
1 Answer: None at all. As I say, I felt
2 throughout this period that they were using rubber
3 bullets and CS gas. I felt there was no danger where
4 I was and if I had at any time thought that shots were
5 coming in my direction I would have been away round the
6 corner as quickly as I could.
7 Lord Widgery: I have not quite discovered
8 when you decided they were not firing rubber bullets,
9 if at all?
10 Answer: Indeed, it was not until
11 a considerable time later, after we had gone down
12 through the area, that reports began to come in that
13 people had in fact been killed."
14 At F Mr McSparran asked him this question:
15 "Mr McSparran: In fact is the truth of the
16 matter that you could not believe they would be firing
17 live bullets? Is that right?
18 Answer: I could see no reason for it and it
19 was beyond my comprehension as to why they should be
20 doing it. It just did not enter into my calculations.
21 Question: The reason that you thought it was
22 gas and rubber bullets was because of that, that you
23 could not believe they would be firing live ammunition
24 from rifles?
25 Answer: This certainly was my impression."
1 He said that if any rifle shots had been
2 fired at the crowd by trained soldiers in the space
3 south of Pilot Row and towards the Rossville flats it
4 would have been impossible to miss. Then at Day 2,
5 page 75 he was asked this after he had said that, the
6 bottom half of the page. He said he would have thought
7 it was impossible to miss. In fact, the way in which
8 the question was put, just above E, was this:
9 "Question: Of course, if any rifle shot had
10 been fired at such a crowd, it would have been almost
11 impossible, even for trained soldiers, to miss?
12 Answer: I would have thought so.
13 Question: It would be interesting,
14 therefore, to know did you see anyone fall as a result
15 of a shot?
16 Answer: No. The sequence is that the people
17 are in this area, a crowd come running from the William
18 Street direction and also from that entry at the other
19 side," I think that means Macari's Lane or possibly
20 Eden Place:
21 "... the whole lot take to their heels and
22 panic, they run. The armoured vehicles come in and
23 pull round. By the time they have pulled round, opened
24 the doors and got out, most of the people are out of my
25 view and are down here or going through the flats area.
1 Question: So you are saying that, although
2 you saw some of the crowd before they disappeared from
3 your view, after the noise of firing began you would
4 not necessarily see if someone round the corner had
5 been hit?
6 Answer: No, I would not have seen, because
7 my view was obstructed.
8 Question: But you would not expect it in any
9 case because, with your experience of these scenes you
10 were confident it was rubber bullets and CS gas?
11 Answer: If I had thought there had been
12 firing of real bullets down that end and there had been
13 people killed I would have been endeavouring to get
14 round and try and see for myself what was happening."
15 Then he said he did not hear automatic fire.
16 It looks likely as if the youth who he
17 described in his evidence is the same youth who
18 Mr Morris was referring to and is photographed in at
19 EP2.5. In the course of his cross-examination
20 Mr Capper also revealed at Day 2, page 72, at the
21 bottom of the page, he was asked this at F:
22 "The majority were having rifles, that
23 immediately after they got out, they started firing,
24 but most of them seemed to be firing from a standing
25 position."
1 Then he was asked this:
2 "Question: Were they standing together when
3 they fired from this standing position or were they
4 separated round the area?
5 Answer: Some of them had run forward into
6 the flats area and they had captured one or two people
7 there.
8 Question: Perhaps you would indicate there
9 with the marker what you mean?
10 Answer: When they came out one of them drew
11 a bead on me. Since I waved a tape recorder and said
12 'press', the others ran up here into the courtyard and
13 others stood around in the vicinity of the Saracens.
14 Question: How far were you away from the man
15 who drew a bead on you?
16 Answer: 15 to 20 feet."
17 I assume by "draw a bead on me" he means
18 directed his rifle at him. It is apparent from his
19 statement to this Tribunal that after this had happened
20 a second Paratrooper passed by and said "It is all
21 fucking go, ain't it", which we heard on the
22 recording.
23 That appears at M9.18 where, at paragraph 8
24 he said:
25 "8. As I was watching this happen, a soldier
1 ran up to me and pointed his rifle at me. I showed him
2 my recording equipment and said that I was a reporter
3 and he ran off. Then a second soldier went past me and
4 said 'it's all fucking go here mate'. This can be
5 heard on the recording." And indeed it can.
6 It was Mr Capper who said that he heard and
7 recorded on the tape what sounded like a machine gun
8 which he believed to be the sound of the rotation of
9 helicopter blades. He says that at Day 2, page 76, at
10 -- he says it inter alia at that spot, he was asked
11 whether he had observed a helicopter flying overhead
12 and he said yes, the question at D:
13 "Question: How often did you hear that
14 peculiar and unusual noise?"
15 He is referring to the noise of the
16 helicopter. His answer is:
17 "Answer: It would be difficult to say. It
18 has only come to my attention since playing back the
19 tape and I heard this noise on it. I know from
20 previous experience that this is the type of noise that
21 the helicopter can make and knowing the time factor,
22 that this came three or four minutes before the
23 Saracens came in, I can only put it forward. This is
24 what I heard; this is a possible interpretation.
25 Question: Would it be right to say that,
1 whether it came from the helicopter or from a Tommy
2 gun, you did not remember hearing it at the time until
3 you heard it on your tape recorder?
4 Answer: No, it made no impact at all."
5 What it all boils down to is this at F, the
6 second question:
7 "Question: Are we to understand this, that
8 there are some sounds on your tape-recording which
9 sounds like a Tommy gun but which you think are really
10 due to the rotors of a helicopter?
11 Answer: Yes.
12 Question: How firmly do you hold that view
13 as a possibility?
14 Answer: That this sound sounds like
15 a machine gun but was in fact a helicopter?
16 Question: It is a mere possibility, is it?
17 Answer: I am pretty certain in my own mind
18 that this was the sound made by the helicopter."
19 I should have gone to the top of this page
20 and explained that what he had said was, in answer to
21 the question at the top of the page:
22 "Answer: What I did hear about four minutes
23 before the Saracens came in was the sound of
24 a helicopter going overhead. This is also on the
25 tape-recording. Under certain conditions of the rotors
1 - I do not know whether it is when they are opposed -
2 there is a noise not unlike machine gun fire. This is
3 on the tape-recording: you can hear something like
4 a machine gun."
5 What he was saying was, when he went and
6 listened to the tape there was a noise which was the
7 sound of a helicopter, which he thinks is the sound of
8 a helicopter which sounds like a Tommy gun.
9 Another witness who gave evidence to the same
10 effect appears at Day 3, page 72, who was Mr Chartres,
11 just above C:
12 "Question: I think you are aware that some
13 witnesses have said that they heard automatic fire in
14 the Bogside on this particular afternoon. In your
15 experience is it any rate possible to mix-up that
16 noise, namely the noise of automatic fire, with any
17 other noise?
18 Answer: Yes, I think it is. It is very easy
19 to confuse it with a noise which is made by
20 a helicopter when a certain manoeuvre is being carried
21 out. I first experienced this phenomenon soon after
22 the Army entered the arena and in fact thought I was
23 hearing machine gun fire. I have frequently noticed
24 that, particularly I think the Army Sioux helicopter.
25 I am informed when the pilot alters the pitch of the
1 blades it emits a noise which is very similar to
2 a burst of machine gun fire in the distance. In fact
3 on this occasion I did say to a colleague when we heard
4 this noise 'I wish these helicopters would not make
5 that sort of noise'."
6 In order to address the extent to which it
7 may or may not be possible to confuse the sound of
8 a helicopter -- at any rate in certain conditions --
9 with the sound of a machine gun, the Inquiry has
10 commissioned a report from ISVR.
11 If we go to E9001, we will find the ISVR
12 summary report. ISVR have produced a series of
13 substantial, long and (in some respects) highly
14 technical reports, but they have been helpful enough to
15 provide for our general assistance a summary of those
16 reports. If we look at E9.19, we will find a summary
17 of their report number 5903. It is sufficiently short
18 to make it bearable for me to read it, it is only five
19 paragraphs. What they say is this:
20 "Helicopters can produce sharply impulsive
21 sounds, a regular series of beeps or bumps commonly
22 known as 'blade slap'. Blade slap most frequently
23 occurs during transient manoeuvres and is often
24 associated with steep turns, shallow descent and with
25 the flare approaching a hover. Under certain
1 conditions with some helicopters continuous blade slap
2 can occur in level flight."
3 They then quote from some research by some
4 people called Leverton & Taylor, who note that:
5 "Pilots have reported that in combat
6 conditions the sound of rounds being shot at the
7 helicopter is the only means by which members of the
8 crew know that they are being fired upon. Many times
9 blade slap noise has been mistaken for machine gun fire
10 and vice versa."
11 Then they go on to say:
12 "We presume that the authors are suggesting
13 that the pilots, rather than observers on the ground,
14 have confused blade slap and machine gun fire, but the
15 observation is useful. Our recordings of the Sioux
16 helicopter, at two test speeds, show that blade slap
17 was audible to an observer on the ground when the
18 helicopter was approaching at a 40 knot test speed and
19 when the helicopter was coming into or leaving hover.
20 The blade slap was not prominent at the second speed of
21 70 knots or during hover or after the helicopter had
22 passed to the recording position at either test speed.
23 "With the Sioux helicopter, when blade slap
24 occurs, the rate of beating is between 11.4 and 12.4
25 beats per second. This is similar to the firing rate
1 of a Sten gun, which is 11 rounds per second, and was
2 within the spread of firing rates from 9 to 17 rounds
3 per second, recorded from the various machine guns,
4 submachine guns and automatic rifles demonstrated at
5 Beckingham.
6 "The peak sound pressures from the blade
7 slap received which a listener on the ground from
8 a Sioux helicopter at a height of 1,000 or 2,000 feet
9 were between 0.6 and 1.4 Pascals" a Pascal being an
10 unit of pressure:
11 "A submachine gun would need to be a few
12 hundred metres away for the peak pressures to be this
13 low or else shaded by buildings. The sound of
14 individual blade slap impulses is subjectively lower in
15 pitch than nearby gunfire and the character of the
16 blade slap often changes perceptibly from slap to slap,
17 whereas the repeated shots in a burst of submachine gun
18 fire are more uniform and regular. Our opinion is that
19 under conditions where a helicopter or machine gun is
20 clearly audible above any background noise, their
21 sounds would be sufficiently distinctive that the
22 likelihood of confusion would be small.
23 "However, taking into account that the
24 repetition rate of blade slap is similar to the rate of
25 firing of some submachine guns, it might be possible
1 under some conditions for an observer on the ground to
2 mistake a brief period of helicopter blade slap for the
3 firing of a submachine gun at a moderate distance."
4 Lastly, in relation to Mr Capper, if we go to
5 Day 2, page 78, he was asked about things being dropped
6 from number 1 block by Mr Gibbens, third line down, who
7 said this:
8 "Question: Did you know then that one of
9 the features of the attacks on the troops on this
10 occasion was that the people in Rossville flats were
11 dropping acid containers - I will not call them bombs -
12 down on the troops below?
13 Answer: No. I could see them dropping
14 missiles,; there were bottles being dropped, bricks,
15 stones.
16 Question: From?
17 Answer: From the upper balconies.
18 Question: And acid mainly - you do not
19 know?
20 Answer: I do not know.
21 Question: You could not tell. But they
22 certainly were being assaulted from up above?
23 Answer: They were under a hail of missiles.
24 Question: From your experience would you
25 agree that acid bombs is a pretty new development?
1 Answer: Yes; they have been in use about
2 a year possibly."
3 He said they were used in Andersonstown
4 occasionally, infrequently as compared with the other
5 missiles that were used.
6 I now turn to Mr Simon Winchester of The
7 Guardian. I deal with him at a little length because
8 of what he wrote in an article that appeared in that
9 newspaper on the next morning. What he said appears at
10 M83.44. What he said in that article is this:
11 "And while it is impossible to be absolutely
12 sure, one came away with the firm impression,
13 reinforced by dozens of eyewitnesses, that the
14 soldiers, men of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute
15 Regiment flown in specially from Belfast, may have
16 fired needlessly into the huge crowd."
17 If we go to the next page, 83.45, in the
18 middle column of the last paragraph but one, he said
19 this:
20 "There was certainly some firing from the
21 IRA. I heard one submachine gun open up from inside
22 the flats and heard a number of small calibre weapons
23 being fired intermittently, but the sound which
24 predominated was the heavy, hard banging of the British
25 SLRs and this continued for about 10 or 13 minutes."
1 It will be remembered that he had previously
2 heard, according to his evidence, at about five minutes
3 past 4, a high velocity shot which he thought came from
4 the direction of the Little Diamond at a time when he
5 was at the City Cabs office just to the west of
6 Aggro Corner on the south side of William Street. He
7 said that he then walked down William Street to the
8 east, turned right into Rossville Street and initially
9 decided to cross the open ground of Eden Place to get
10 to the corner of William and Chamberlain Street.
11 In the end he decided not to walk against the
12 crowd, but turned to walk towards Free Derry Corner.
13 He described himself as being in the middle of the
14 crowd; seeing the APCs come in and running towards the
15 stairwell of the Rossville flats in a crowd of several
16 hundred.
17 He said that he heard a number of shots, not,
18 he was convinced, baton rounds, although in
19 cross-examination he said that he could not be certain
20 that he did not hear rubber bullets from behind him,
21 some six or seven of the same type as the single high
22 velocity shot he had heard earlier in William Street.
23 He then said that he dropped to the ground at
24 a place which in his Widgery transcript he has
25 identified as "at the entrance to the Rossville flats
1 courtyard with Chamberlain Street on his left-hand
2 side".
3 He stayed there for twenty seconds and then
4 dodged behind the low wall in the car park. As he
5 looked round he saw vehicles on the wasteground of
6 Pilot Row and a man lying injured at the position where
7 he, Simon Winchester, had previously dropped down,
8 bleeding from the leg and propped up by one or two
9 colleagues. He heard a lot of what seemed to be pain
10 and shouting.
11 His next move was to run through the
12 stairwell in the flats between blocks 2 and 3 during
13 which time there was some more rifle fire. When he got
14 to the rear of the flats, that is below block 2, he
15 thought that he heard some answering fire. He deals
16 with that at Day 3, page 15, Widgery transcript Day 3,
17 page 15, the second half of the page where he says this
18 just above E:
19 "Question: When you got into the rear of
20 the Rossville flats, was there gunfire then?
21 Answer: Yes. It was about this time,
22 I think, and I did note it in my notebook, although
23 I did not give it a time. As well as being able to
24 hear what I thought was firing coming from the Army,
25 I thought I also heard some answering fire, and
1 I thought it was low calibre: it was a very sharp
2 distinct crack, and I thought it was a .22 rifle fire.
3 And I thought I heard some automatic fire which seemed
4 to come from the general direction of the flats." That
5 is to say the Rossville flats:
6 "Question: Did you see any soldiers as you
7 were in the rear of the Rossville flats?
8 Answer: Yes. I went up a flight of steps
9 behind the flats which go up on to the raised ground
10 behind Fahan Street, and from this raised ground - I am
11 not sure if I was on Fahan Street itself or some
12 pavement below it - I could see soldiers deployed along
13 here."
14 "Here" is the front of Glenfada Park. It is
15 not clear exactly where he means. He has got to Fahan
16 Street or alternatively a pavement below Fahan Street
17 and he describes soldiers positioned just in front of
18 Glenfada Park. Mr Read then says to him by way of what
19 is recorded as a question:
20 "Question: We have called that block number
21 2.
22 Answer: And he fired a number of shots in
23 the direction generally of Joseph Place flats. I would
24 say he fired 4, 5 or 6 shots."
25 I think that is a reference to
1 Glenfada Park South on the basis that Glenfada Park
2 north is presumably block 1 in the nomenclature Mr Read
3 was using and Glenfada Park South, block 2, but I am
4 not certain of that and it is not wholly clear.
5 In any event what he says is that a soldier
6 fired up to him 4, 5 or 6 shots whilst he was in or
7 below Fahan Street East. If that is so these are not
8 shots which tally with any admitted shot from any
9 soldier. I think it may help, if it is not unduly
10 difficult, to have the virtual reality model back again
11 because we can, with its aid look at what he may have
12 been seeing. This is Fahan Street East. Here are the
13 steps which lead up to Fahan Street East from the south
14 of block 2.
15 That is a computer panorama engineered so as
16 to put in place the Rossville flats that have been
17 destroyed, demolished. It must have been to somewhere
18 like this that Mr Winchester went. It may be that he
19 is referring to somebody firing from the block of
20 Glenfada Park South as I take it to be, which one can
21 see in the mid distance below the cathedral. I am not
22 sure where else he can be referring to because
23 Joseph Place, as we can see, lies as a protective set
24 of buildings between him and any firer to the west.
25 In any event what he said in his evidence was
1 that he saw two people fall to the ground and not
2 move. If we go back to Day 3, page 16, he was asked
3 this about the soldier:
4 "Question: How could you tell he was
5 actually firing?
6 Answer: I could see his arm jerking and
7 I heard the bangs which were more or less coincident
8 with his arm jerking." He said he did not see where
9 the shots struck:
10 "... but at this point I did see two people
11 fall to the ground and not move.
12 Question: Did they fall whilst those shots
13 were being fired by that soldier, or before or
14 afterwards?
15 Answer: It was about the same time. There
16 was other shooting going on at the same time, but I do
17 not believe that soldier could have shot those two
18 people.
19 Question: Why did you not believe that?
20 Answer: He was firing in a different
21 direction.
22 Question: He appeared to be firing in
23 a different direction when these two people fell?
24 Answer: Yes.
25 Question: You indicated towards the gap
1 between the two Joseph Place blocks?"
2 Pausing there, what he appears to have said
3 is that a soldier fired four or six shots in the
4 general direction of Joseph Place and that somebody
5 else was firing, other than that soldier, and that
6 somebody else must have been responsible for the two
7 men who fell. At C he was asked this:
8 "Question: Whereas the two men fell in the
9 courtyard in front of the south block of the Rossville
10 flats and between the north wall of Joseph Place?
11 Answer: Yes."
12 He said they were both men.
13 "They were both men as far as I could see.
14 The one that was nearest me was definitely a man, and
15 I thought the further one was a man.
16 Question: Can you give any information as to
17 how old they were?
18 Answer: Certainly the one nearest me was
19 about 18, dressed in blue denim top and blue jeans.
20 The other one I could not say. Certainly he was
21 dressed in some sort of brown overcoat. He might have
22 been older, I cannot say for certain.
23 Question: Did they move after they fell?
24 Answer: No. I saw them later on and they
25 were still there." He could not see any objects around
1 them.
2 The one nearest to him is a boy of about 18
3 with a blue denim top and jeans and the one further
4 away was someone with a brown overcoat who might have
5 been older. The apparently older man might be
6 Mr McGuigan, though he was wearing a blue anorak. The
7 younger man whom Mr Winchester describes as closer to
8 him, that is to say further to the east, does not seem
9 to tally with Mr Doherty who died further to the east
10 between block 2 and the north of Joseph Place because
11 Mr Doherty was 31 and was not wearing a blue top and
12 jeans, but had a grey and black check car coat,
13 although it is possible that Mr Doherty is the older
14 man referred to and somebody else was further to the
15 east in a blue denim top and jeans.
16 But the matter is made more complicated
17 because in the article which he wrote on the next day,
18 at M83.45, what he said was this, in the second column:
19 "The Paratroopers piled out of their
20 vehicles. Many ran forward to make arrests but others
21 rushed to the street corners. It was these men,
22 perhaps 20 in all, who opened fire with their rifles.
23 I saw three men fall to the ground. One was still
24 obviously alive with blood pumping from his leg."
25 That appears to be the man he was referring
1 to in the car park of the Rossville flats:
2 "The others, both apparently in their teens,
3 seemed dead."
4 The only other two to which he refers in his
5 evidence are the two to the south of block 2 of the
6 Rossville flats, described in this article as both
7 apparently in their teens. The article, taken
8 literally and sequentially, appears to suggest that 20
9 men fired and in consequence of those 20 men firing the
10 three men in question all fell to the ground. When one
11 knows what Mr Winchester's evidence was, it is plain
12 that the position is a good deal more complicated than
13 that.
14 In any event, he then went towards Free Derry
15 Corner with a boy of about 19 whom he had previously
16 met at Magilligan the week before and who he appears to
17 have met when sheltering in the stairwell between block
18 3 and block 2. His evidence was that as they passed
19 between the south block of the Rossville flats and
20 Joseph Place they were fired upon by a sniper. If we
21 go to Day 3, page 16, at the bottom of the page at F he
22 was asked this:
23 "Question: Where you did you go then?
24 Answer: I met up with a chap who I had been
25 with in the Magilligan camp demonstration the previous
1 week. I do not know his name, a civilian, a young boy
2 of 19. We were sheltering on one of these pavements.
3 It might have been Fahan Street, but I do not think it
4 was. We were sheltering there because we thought we
5 would be unlikely to be hit by fire from Glenfada or
6 Kells Walk. We decided to go to Free Derry Corner and
7 we walked in that direction. We did not walk with any
8 conspicuous care or crawl forwards on our hands and
9 knees. When we got to a point opposite the gap between
10 the south block and the Joseph Place block, I believe
11 we were fired on by an Army sniper.
12 Question: Where was the Army sniper?
13 Answer: I am pretty sure he was here, on
14 that corner.
15 Question: You are indicating the corner of
16 block 2 of Glenfada Park near the junction of
17 Fahan Street West and Rossville Street?
18 Answer: Yes.
19 Question: Could you see him?
20 Answer: Yes, I could see him, certainly.
21 Question: What made you think he was firing
22 at you?
23 Answer: He obviously saw us because he had
24 his rifle in the resting position on his knee and he
25 swung it up and pointed it in our direction, at least
1 I believe he did, it was a very subjective impression,
2 and we dropped to the ground, and there were two loud
3 bangs. I noted in my notebook at the time and in the
4 report I wrote in the newspaper, that a fist size chunk
5 of masonry fell on the road in front of us on the Free
6 Derry Corner side.
7 Question: Where did that come from?
8 Answer: I do not know. This is why I do not
9 know if it has any connection. There were two low
10 walls.
11 Question: What were you wearing at the
12 time?
13 Answer: A Barbour shooting jacket, a green
14 waterproof coat-length jacket, and corduroy trousers,
15 like a combat jacket, military style. Certain people
16 have commented in the past that I was taking a risk
17 wearing it."
18 What he appeared to be saying is that there
19 was an Army sniper, so he was pretty sure, at the
20 corner of block 2 of Glenfada Park near the junction of
21 Fahan Street West and Rossville Street. If you look at
22 Q8, the corner of Fahan Street West and
23 Rossville Street a where I have marked and he appears,
24 therefore, to be talking about somebody firing from
25 that direction causing a fair sized piece of masonry to
1 fall in the road in front of them, but this is
2 described as happening as they pass the south block of
3 the Rossville flats and Joseph Place, presumably
4 somewhere about there.
5 LORD SAVILLE: Can we work out where this
6 witness says in his evidence where he was coming from?
7 MR CLARKE: What he had done, as I understand
8 his evidence, is to come down into the car park. He
9 had stopped at some time by the wall, he had gone down
10 in between block 2 and 3 and he then came up the stairs
11 that lead to Fahan Street East. Then he had gone down
12 in a southwesterly direction towards Free Derry Corner.
13 LORD SAVILLE: I thought that too, but he
14 seems to be describing being shot at between block 2 of
15 the Rossville flats, and the north part of
16 Joseph Place, unless as I have misunderstood his
17 evidence. He had already passed there. And he has
18 also said he was on his way to Free Derry Corner. You
19 would not go that way. If he was at the start of the
20 steps, he would go on going south, would not he, or
21 southwest?
22 MR CLARKE: He could mean that as he was at
23 the top of the steps, if you look at the little block
24 of green I have put above the word 'Street', that is
25 a place which shares the characteristics of being in
1 Fahan Street at the top of the steps and in line of the
2 position between block 2 and Joseph Place.
3 There are two question marks: on this
4 hypothesis he is fired at from somebody at the corner
5 of Glenfada Park South, where it leads into
6 Fahan Street West, in circumstances that a piece of
7 masonry behind him falls off. If it is possible to go
8 back to the virtual reality model, it is not easy at
9 first blush to see where on earth that can be because,
10 if we go back to where we were before. Here is
11 Fahan Street East. That is the top of the stairs. Of
12 course one can go further up to the north, but what he
13 is describing, as I understand it, is being shot at
14 from somewhere behind Joseph Place, in a manner which
15 seems rather difficult to understand. I do not know
16 whether the photographs -- he is up there somewhere.
17 There is Fahan Street East. It is all a bit of a
18 mystery. When one looks for a bit of wall behind,
19 there was of course the wall of the Rossville flats
20 themselves but that apart it is difficult to see which
21 bit of masonry can have fallen off and come close to
22 Mr Winchester, but no doubt in due time we may
23 discover.
24 What he said in the article the next day at
25 M83.45, in the middle column, the third paragraph:
1 "Army snipers could be seen firing
2 continuously towards the central Bogside streets and at
3 one stage a lone Army sniper on a street corner fired
4 two shots towards me as I stepped around a corner. One
5 shot chipped a large chunk of masonry from a wall
6 behind me:
7 "Then people could be seen moving forward in
8 Fahan Street, their hands above their heads."
9 It may be that he is referring to the
10 retaining wall on the east side of Fahan Street East.
11 One may have to address this with a little care because
12 if we look at M83.19, we will see paragraph 24 of his
13 statement to Lord Widgery, where he says:
14 "We decided to chance it and walked gingerly
15 down in the direction of St Columb's Wells so as to
16 make our way to Free Derry Corner protected by
17 Joseph Place as far as possible. As we walked past the
18 gap between the Rossville flats and Joseph Place I saw
19 an Army marksman on the corner of Rossville Street and
20 Fahan Street aim his rifle in our direction. I saw two
21 distinct puffs of smoke and as I dived back into the
22 cover of the Rossville flats, I heard the two bangs of
23 his rifle. As we lay on the ground I saw a piece of
24 stone hit the pavement about five yards from me and
25 I assumed at the time that this had been dislodged by
1 one of the shots. On reflection I am not sure that
2 this can be connected directly with the shooting and
3 I rather regret stating in my story in The Guardian
4 that one of the shots 'chipped a large chunk of masonry
5 from a wall behind me', but I remain convinced that the
6 marksman was firing at us."
7 Then he goes on to deal with his green combat
8 jacket. What he appears to be saying is he saw some
9 puffs of smoke and dived back into the cover of the
10 flats, which would have meant that he, presumably,
11 retreated back up Fahan Street East and then saw a
12 piece of stone hit the pavement about five yards from
13 him, which he assumed had been dislodged by one of the
14 shots, put a good deal more definitely and perhaps
15 unfortunately in the article that appears in The
16 Guardian.
17 If we go back to page 18, of Day 3, the
18 second half of the page, he said this at G last
19 question:
20 "Question: Can I take you back in the
21 narrative because I think there is one thing you may
22 not have given evidence about and you may be able to
23 give evidence about. You believe you were shot at by
24 this marksman and you saw a piece of masonry fall. Did
25 you see any people walking with their hands above their
1 head?
2 Answer: I did. I forgot to mention it. It
3 was over in Fahan Street West. There were a number of
4 people, about a dozen I would say, walking from these
5 houses towards what I think is called Abbey Park. One
6 of them, the nearer one to me, had a white handkerchief
7 in his right hand. It was raised above his head and he
8 was waving it. They were about halfway across the road
9 when there was a lot of firing which seemed to come
10 from within Abbey Park, so they all dropped to the
11 ground and scuttled back.
12 Question: Did they all scuttle back?
13 Answer: If you are implying did I see
14 anybody hurt, I did not.
15 Question: When I said, and you agreed,
16 'hands above the head', indicate what you mean?
17 Answer: They nearly all had their hands
18 above their head, indicating, I think, surrender."
19 As I think has become apparent from what
20 I have already said, if Mr Winchester was fired on by
21 a soldier when he was at whatever spot he was at, this
22 is not something that features in any of the soldiers'
23 evidence.
24 What happened thereafter was that they made
25 their way to the Lecky Road, during the course of which
1 he said that they heard very sporadic .22 fire and he
2 noticed the last rifle fire as opposed to small calibre
3 fire as occurring at 16.35. He then met up with
4 Mr Wade of the Daily Telegraph and Tony Fry of the BBC
5 at Free Derry Corner. They stood around for about
6 quarter of an hour watching injured people being loaded
7 into cars. They then made their way back towards the
8 Long Tower church. It is then the incident that
9 I referred to a good deal earlier in this opening
10 occurred, when they went into the church and when they
11 came out were fired on at close range, some five shots,
12 by a sniper with a .22 rifle, who was said to be
13 a Protestant from the Fountain Street area nearby.
14 What Mr Winchester also told Lord Widgery was
15 that he was one of those who saw a number of teenage
16 youths clearing passers-by away from Kells Walk. One
17 gets that at Day 3, page 12. At B he was asked this:
18 "Question: What did you do after you heard
19 that shot?" That is the shot at 4.50:
20 "Answer: I walked back down William Street
21 and turned right into Rossville Street, and it was at
22 this point I saw something which might be relevant -
23 a number of people who seemed to be teenage youths
24 clearing passers-by away from an entry which led into
25 Columbcille Court."
1 We go to C, the second question:
2 "Question: Between the building known as
3 Kells Walk by the side of Columbcille Court?
4 Answer: Yes. This is where it was
5 happening. I should point out it was happening before
6 I walked up William Street. It did not seem to have
7 any significance until I heard the single shot, and
8 then I thought to myself what they might be doing was
9 moving people away.
10 Question: Were they boys or girls or men and
11 women?
12 Answer: I think they were boys.
13 Question: Did you in fact hear any
14 shooting?
15 Answer: No."
16 On the assumption that is referring to the
17 same incident as is spoken of by other witnesses, it
18 appears to be able to trace it geographically to the
19 road or the walkway that leads from Rossville Street
20 into, eventually, the Kells Walk roadway.
21 He also says, if you go to M83.45, we will
22 find his article of the next day which, on the
23 assumption that it is accurate, says this:
24 "Weeping men and women in the Bogside spent
25 the next half hour in Lecky Road, pushing bodies of the
1 dead and injured people into cars and driving them to
2 hospital. I saw seven such cars drive away with some
3 of the bleeding bodies on the back seats, inert and
4 lifeless.
5 "By 5.30 pm it was all over."
6 My learned friend Mr Roxburgh has prepared
7 a document which we will circulate in due course, which
8 is our best fit, if I can use a computer language
9 expression -- his best fit -- in relation to the
10 evidence of which of the dead and wounded were conveyed
11 to Altnagelvin by what means of transport. It is a
12 difficult and time-consuming exercise to perform
13 because the sources of information are myriad and
14 confusing. The statements of the ambulance drivers do
15 not indicate the names of the dead and wounded, that
16 was a matter of little concern in the immediacy of the
17 moment and descriptions by people of those they saw in
18 the ambulances or who they took are not always clear.
19 But by a process of taking what is clear and by
20 eliminating the impossible, we have produced a document
21 that indicates whom we believe to have been taken by
22 what means of transport.
23 Most victims of which we know were taken to
24 Altnagelvin hospital by ambulance or, in the case of
25 three of those who died at the barricade, in an Army
1 Saracen. In a couple of cases, not I think relating to
2 injuries to the south of block 2, they were taken by
3 private motorcar. The potential significance of this
4 evidence, if accurate, is that he refers to seven cars
5 driving away with what he describes as some of the
6 bleeding bodies on the back seats, "inert and lifeless"
7 and if that is so and if this relates to serious
8 injuries, then these are not injured persons whose
9 identity is presently known, at any rate to me.
10 Mr Winchester has given a statement to the
11 present Tribunal which can be found at M83.3. There
12 are some significant differences between that statement
13 and some of the evidence that we have been looking at.
14 What he says is at paragraph 14. He refers to an
15 incident to an exchange of rudeness with somebody at
16 barrier 14. Paragraph 14 he says:
17 "After this incident I decided to leave the
18 area near barrier 14 ... I walked back along William
19 Street in a northwesterly direction and found myself at
20 the junction of William Street and Rossville Street
21 known as Aggro Corner. I paused there for a moment and
22 looked back towards barrier 14. As I was doing so
23 I heard a single shot which perplexed me. It sounded
24 like a low calibre shot and I remember that it came
25 from above and behind me, possibly from the Rossville
1 flats or Glenfada Park areas. I may have been
2 sheltering in the doorway of a taxi company when this
3 happened ... I think I was possibly at the point marked
4 A on the map attached."
5 Then he quotes from his book:
6 "'I noted the direction of the shot - it
7 came, it seemed, from behind me, from where, had they
8 be on duty that day, the IRA could have expected to
9 have positioned its snipers'."
10 The point he has marked as A is at the
11 southwest of Aggro Corner, at the very apex of the
12 corner. So he appears here to be saying that he heard
13 a low calibre shot from the Rossville flats or
14 Glenfada Park areas to the south, whereas according to
15 his evidence in 1972, at 16.05 he heard a high velocity
16 shot from the direction of Little Diamond, that is to
17 say from the northwest at the City Cabs office:
18 "I then began to make my way along
19 Rossville Street in a southerly direction ...
20 "16. At Kells Walk ... I thought I saw
21 another sinister sign: a crowd that had gathered was
22 being pushed away by a number of youths. They were
23 clearing away for something - was it, as I noted in my
24 book, for a line of fire?"
25 He then refers to the entry of the soldiers,
1 whom he saw because he looked back up in a northerly
2 direction.
3 Then at the top of the next page he says:
4 "19. Upon seeing this I made my way to the
5 rubble barricade ... I climbed over the barricade which
6 was made of piles of old bricks ... I remember a Humber
7 1 tonner coming towards me very fast and screeching to
8 a halt somewhere on the wasteground between Eden Place
9 and Pilot Row and I could see soldiers deploying from
10 it with guns, dropping into firing positions and then
11 I heard gunfire, screaming, and saw injured people.
12 Although I cannot now pinpoint my exact location
13 I remember soldiers fanning out from their armoured
14 cars. There were three or four of these vehicles
15 parked alongside Glenfada Park North and some were
16 parked further back alongside Kells Walk:
17 "20. Around 20 soldiers came out of these
18 vehicles in Platoon sized groups. These soldiers did
19 not have batons and I thought that these were hard men
20 and there for a reason other than crowd control."
21 I can go to the next paragraph:
22 "21. I then saw some of these soldiers kneel
23 down and fire from the Glenfada Park area in my
24 direction. At this time I think that I had cleared the
25 rubble barricade in Rossville Street and was somewhere
1 near the southern end of block 1 at about J16 on the
2 attached map."
3 J16 is at the southwest end of block 1, so on
4 this account he goes down and crosses the rubble
5 barricade to the southwest of block 1 down
6 Rossville Street:
7 "I could see the bodies of the soldiers
8 jerking in co-ordination with the rifle reports which
9 I could hear and I had the feeling that some of them
10 were aiming up in the air, possibly at the Rossville
11 flats. Very soon after this firing I saw injured
12 people. I remember two in particular who were lying on
13 the floor in grid reference J17. One of these two
14 seemed to be still mobile and was dragged into the gap
15 between blocks 1 and 2 ... I do not know by whom. The
16 other man was probably dead and was left there.
17 "23. My recollection is that I went through
18 the gap between block 1 and 2 and then made my way
19 along the passageway in front of block 2 ... on the car
20 park side taking cover behind some dustbins.
21 I remember these dustbins as being very large, about
22 six or eight feet high. I was able to take cover
23 behind them until I reached the southeastern end of
24 block 2. As I made this journey ... I did not see any
25 soldiers but I remember hearing firing from behind me,
1 presumably in the Glenfada Park area. I also remember
2 that I was moving against the general flow of people as
3 I travelled in this direction. I was walking slowly as
4 I went and the journey from block 1 where I had started
5 to the gap between blocks 2 and 3 took a considerable
6 amount of time. However, I felt relatively secure here
7 because it appeared to me to be safer to walk on the
8 inside of the flats."
9 He is not sure that he actually went into one
10 of the blocks of flats, but:
11 "It is possible that on my way between
12 blocks 1 and 2 I went into a crowded stairwell to
13 shelter whilst the firing continued. I was able to
14 hear high velocity fire and I also heard what sounded
15 like machine gun fire returning the Army's fire.
16 "I am not sure whether I heard this
17 submachine gun when I was sheltering in a stairwell or
18 when I had reached the southeastern end of block 2
19 where it joins block 3."
20 But he says he is familiar with the sound of
21 an SLR, and also aware of a helicopter flying overhead:
22 "I am pretty sure that what I heard was
23 neither a helicopter nor an SLR, but the sound of
24 a belt-fed machine gun. I knew that the IRA had these
25 weapons in their arsenal. It sounded to me as if this
1 firing was coming from an elevated position in the
2 Glenfada Park area or somewhere behind me in that
3 direction."
4 He says he was wearing his green Barbour and
5 felt very vulnerable:
6 "... because through a rifle sight it might
7 well have looked like the dress of a Provisional
8 rifleman.
9 "26. I must have walked between blocks 2 and
10 3 ... in a southerly direction to emerge at
11 approximately at the point marked B."
12 The point marked B is between blocks 2 and 3:
13 "It was while I was standing there that
14 I remember seeing a body being taken from somewhere in
15 the Joseph Place area into the Joseph Place flats.
16 I remember the man was in a raincoat. Someone was
17 holding the body's shoulders and somebody else was
18 holding the ankles. I then glanced around the corner
19 of block 2 towards Rossville Street and noticed the two
20 bodies I had seen earlier in grid reference J17 had
21 gone. I also saw about a dozen soldiers by
22 Glenfada Park South, who I assumed had come down there
23 from Rossville Street.
24 "There were Army vehicles there as well,
25 although I cannot remember how many, and the soldiers
1 resumed firing positions and looked upwards often.
2 Some looked in the direction of Free Derry Corner and
3 some looked in the direction of Joseph Place and some
4 of them were using binoculars. I remember at one stage
5 crawling along the ground and also walking with my arms
6 deliberately held out to the side to show any watching
7 soldier this I was unarmed. I am not sure where I was
8 when this happened.
9 "27. By this stage it seemed that things
10 were winding down and I was beginning to get the
11 feeling that the event was over. I walked from the gap
12 between blocks 2 and 3 of the Rossville flats to the
13 steps that led to Fahan Street East, where I met
14 a civilian. I did not know him although it is possible
15 that I had met him while at Magilligan the previous
16 week. We both walked up the steps, crossed over Fahan
17 Street East and walked up on to the grass bank beneath
18 the city walls and looked down. We walked all the way
19 up to the city walls to a point just below the Army
20 observation post where we stood at Nailor's Row at
21 approximately point C."
22 If we look at M83.49, point C is just below
23 the Army observation post, OP Charlie. That must have
24 involved clambering up the grass bank, though it would
25 have been in line with Fahan Street West.
1 Go back to M83.5, the bottom half of the
2 page:
3 "I could see soldiers scurrying about by
4 Glenfada Park South in the area of grid reference
5 H17/18. I noticed two soldiers in particular who were
6 close together ..." then he describes one as "scanning
7 towards Free Derry Corner to the south. The second
8 soldier saw me and came to take an interest in me.
9 I am not now sure exactly where he was but he may have
10 been at H17 or possibly I17, as I have a feeling,
11 having recently been to the site ... that he was
12 further out from Glenfada Park South than I had
13 originally remembered."
14 Over the page at 29, he says:
15 "The rifle of the soldier was going from my
16 right to my left and then back to my right and then
17 pointing at me or in my general direction. He did not
18 fire from a standing position, but took aim
19 deliberately. He went down on one knee. I saw two
20 rapid jerks and certainly one puff of smoke. I did not
21 hear the bullet. The next thing I heard was something
22 behind me over my left shoulder. It was a sort of
23 smack and a small piece or a little shower of stones
24 pebbled down on the road beside me. I remember one was
25 bigger than the other. Most of them were about an inch
1 or so in size and were obviously of masonry or
2 brickwork. I was at this time hard up against the body
3 of the city walls and these stones fell out into the
4 roadway. There was a definite noise of stone on
5 stone. I did not look to see any more. I wanted to
6 get out of there.
7 "30. I fell to my knees and said 'Christ,
8 they are shooting at us'. I got up again and the
9 soldiers had moved on: had lost interest ...
10 "I had a recollection of seeing ambulances
11 and cars at Free Derry Corner. I scuttled off in that
12 direction. I did not go as far as Free Derry Corner.
13 I remember coming down from the grass and finding
14 people milling about."
15 The account that is there given places him
16 somewhere near Nailor's Row. Compare and contrast the
17 account that was given to Lord Widgery in which he
18 talks of scuttling back for protection behind the wall
19 of the Rossville flats, quite a number of yards further
20 up in a northerly direction.
21 Sir, I am about to come on to a new topic and
22 wonder whether that would be a convenient moment to
23 adjourn?
24 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, certainly. We will
25 resume at 9.30 on Monday morning.
1 (3.00 pm)
2 (Proceedings adjourned until
3 9.30 on Monday, 22nd May 2000)