A lawyer today attacked as "specious nonsense" allegations levelled against the former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath about his knowledge of the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972.
Speaking on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the killings in Derry, Mr David Mackie QC said claims against the 86-year-old former premier were "invariably false" and should never have been made.
Sir Edward has been repeatedly challenged while giving evidence at the Bloody Sunday inquiry about how British soldiers came to shoot dead 13 unarmed Catholic men during a civil rights march and how much he knew about it beforehand.
One claim was that he tried to "browbeat" the chairman of the original inquiry, the then-Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, into reaching a particular conclusion about the causes of the tragedy.
Lord Widgery's 1972 report largely exonerated the British paratroopers who opened fire on the unarmed civil rights marchers, leading to claims of a "whitewash" by survivors and families of the victims.
After re-examining Sir Edward today, Mr Mackie told Bloody Sunday Inquiry chairman Lord Saville that he had not had the opportunity to question witnesses who could support the various allegations made against his client.
Other lawyers at the hearing in central London had made submissions and speeches about what they contended the effect of the evidence would show, he suggested.
He added: "Very serious allegations have been made against our client. In our respectful submissions, they are invariably false and should not have been made.
"The highest any of them get on the scale, in our submission, is specious nonsense ... and will be... flatly contradicted by the testimony of those available to give evidence; flatly contradicted by a common sense reading of the central documents as opposed to grabbing at soundbites from bits and pieces round the edges; flatly contradicted by an elementary knowledge of how Parliament works; flatly contradicted by the fact that our client had the clearest possible governmental motives to avoid this tragedy."
Sir Edward has spent eight days in the witness box and insisted there was "not a scrap of truth" in the suggestion that he knew unarmed civilians could be caught up in shooting between IRA gunmen and British soldiers in Derry.
He has also rejected suggestions that it was Government policy to send troops into the Bogside, that troops were authorised to shoot troublemakers to control crowds and that the blame for any casualties was always intended to be passed on to the organisers and the terrorists.
Today, however, he did admit to taking a closer interest in the situation in Northern Ireland between October 1971 and January 1972 because of its effect on other Government policies, in particular taking Britain into the Common Market. Sir Edward also accepted that during this period, the Government's stance hardened to illegal civil rights marches and escalating violence in northern Ireland.