The counsel to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry yesterday paid tribute to the families of the Bloody Sunday victims and to those who were wounded, at the end of his closing statement yesterday.
Mr Christopher Clarke, QC also thanked "the people of Derry" for accommodating and welcoming the inquiry to the city.
"Most importantly of all, I wish to pay tribute to the families of those who died and to those who were wounded on that day. It is they who more than all others endured the pain of what happened on Bloody Sunday and its aftermath.
"It is to them to whom belongs the credit for pressing for this inquiry and for bearing what must have been the anxieties, tensions and, no doubt, frustrations inherent in an inquiry of this nature. The process has been arduous, the journey long and unfinished.
"I hope and believe that the process itself has already played a part in enabling people to come to terms with the events of that day, in holding to account those whose decisions, actions or inactions contributed to what happened and, whatever the difficulty of determining the roles of individual soldiers, of advancing our understanding of what happened on that day, as I doubt not will become apparent in the tribunal's report."
The inquiry's chairman, Lord Saville, said he and his two colleagues, Mr Justice Hoyt and Mr Justice Toohey, associated themselves with Mr Clarke's remarks.
The three judges will now consider all the evidence they've heard since the inquiry started on March 27th, 2002. They've retired to write their report which will be submitted to the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, probably next summer.
Meanwhile, to symbolically mark the formal closure of the inquiry's hearings, the families of the 13 Bloody Sunday dead, as well as several of the 14 people who were wounded on the day, held a candlelight procession from the Guildhall, where the inquiry sat, to the scene of the killings in the Bogside.