The Bloody Sunday Inquiry/Day 400: A convicted Provisional IRA bomber and gunman who was jailed for 15 years in 1974 for two bombing offences and attempting to murder a British soldier, returned to the scene of one of his bomb attacks yesterday when he gave evidence to the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
Mr Gerry "Mad Dog" Doherty told the inquiry that one of the offences of which he was convicted was the June 1972 bombing of Derry's Guildhall.
Mr Doherty, who said he was "a soldier in the IRA" on Bloody Sunday, told the inquiry sitting in the Guildhall yesterday that at the time of the January 1972 killings by paratroopers of 13 unarmed civilians in the Bogside in Derry, he was one of up to 50 members of the Provisional IRA locally.
He told the inquiry's three judges that he had submitted two statements to the tribunal. In his July 1999 statement, he omitted to say he was member of the IRA on Bloody Sunday, but in his second statement submitted last month, he admitted his IRA membership.
He said he initially viewed the inquiry as "a British court set up by the British government to investigate the British government and, therefore, republicans have spent a lifetime avoiding British courts and, therefore, when the families [of the victims\] and Lord Saville himself asked republicans and members of the IRA to come forward and say what actually happened on that day as regards their involvement or non-involvement, then I felt that the time was right, therefore, that it was right for members of the IRA to come forward and state their case".
Mr Doherty told the 400th day of the inquiry that he was just three days short of his 17th birthday on Bloody Sunday and that he and other members of the Provisional IRA had been ordered to take no action against soldiers on duty during the civil rights march.
He told barrister Mr Edwin Glasgow, for most of the Bloody Sunday soldiers, that he was not involved in the kidnapping of a soldier shortly before Bloody Sunday which led to a dispute between the Provisional and Official IRA
Mr Doherty was then shown a military intelligence document dated six weeks before Bloody Sunday in which it claimed he had recently been shooting at soldiers. He said he had no knowledge of the alleged incident but confirmed that the following year he was charged with the attempted murder of a soldier.
In another document drawn up by the security service, with the words "UK SECRET UK EYES ONLY" on the top of the page, dated September 27th, 1971, it was claimed that he was "involved in the murder of Private Wilkins".
The Royal Anglian Regiment soldier was shot on September 27th, 1971, by an IRA sniper while on observation duty at an army post at Bishop Street in Derry. Pte Wilkins had raised his binoculars to scan the area around his post after a single shot was fired at it when he was then hit by a machine-gun burst.
Asked by Mr Glasgow if the allegation against him was "a truthful statement", Mr Doherty replied: "No it is not."
The inquiry resumes tomorrow.