BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY Day 386The legal representative of Mr Martin McGuinness yesterday described allegations that the Sinn Féin MP had planned a city centre nail bomb attack in Derry on Bloody Sunday as "a complete and utter fabrication and a tissue of lies".
Solicitor Mr Barra McGrory also said the allegations against his client, made by former Provisional IRA man Mr Paddy Ward, were "pure fantasy".
On the 386th day of the inquiry into the shootings by paratroopers of 26 civilians in the Bogside area of Derry in January 1972, Mr McGrory told Mr Ward that if his evidence about his activities on the day of the shootings was to be believed, his "name would be on everybody's lips, you are right up there with Dan Breen, Michael Collins".
The witness, who claimed that he was the officer commanding the junior wing of the IRA on Bloody Sunday, had also alleged in his statement to the inquiry that Mr McGuinness, who was the Provisional IRA's adjutant on the day, had been present when 16 nail bombs were handed out to eight IRA members just hours before the Bloody Sunday killings.
Mr McGrory told Mr Ward he was the first witness to make direct allegations against Mr McGuinness at the inquiry.
"Of all the Security Services material which has been produced to this tribunal, with it there is not one word of you making an allegation against Mr McGuinness," Mr McGrory said.
"Do you not think it very odd, Mr Ward, that in all of the intelligence papers that have been produced to this inquiry, that you are hardly mentioned and that of all the Irish republican movement people who have now come forward to this inquiry, that every single one of them barely knew you? Some of them did not know you at all.
"Martin McGuinness did not know you, Gerry O'Hara knew you, but you were not OC, he was.
"Eddie Dobbins knew you, but not as a member of the IRA.
"Seán Keenan did not know you and Gerry 'Mad Dog' Doherty, he did not know you either.
"Is not the reality, Mr Ward, that in terms of the Irish republican movement at the time, you were a nonentity?" he asked the witness.
Mr Ward said the statements made by those named by Mr McGrory contained "too much similarity" and repeated his assertion that "it all points to coercion between the people involved".
He rejected Mr McGrory's claim that his evidence was utter fabrication.