THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 250: A British paratrooper's radically different accounts of killing a Bloody Sunday marcher were not put before the Widgery inquiry, it was revealed yesterday.
The paratrooper, identified only as Soldier V, "made an admission that was tantamount to an admission of murder", Mr Barry MacDonald QC, for many of the bereaved families, told the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
Soldier V jumped out of an armoured car and shot a man who had thrown a petrol bomb in the Rossville Flats car-park in Derry on Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed civil rights marchers, the inquiry heard yesterday.
Mr MacDonald said there were "glaring discrepancies" between Soldier V's statement to the Royal Military Police, taken straight after Bloody Sunday, and the account he gave to the 1972 Widgery tribunal, which originally investigated the shootings.
Under questioning yesterday, Sir Basil Hall, the Widgery inquiry solicitor, said there were "differences" between the two statements, and the second introduced a "rationalisation" of events which had not been there before.
Mr MacDonald suggested that the Widgery inquiry's legal team had failed to raise these discrepancies because it was biased towards the army.
He suggested that the army may have been given "informal assurances or nods and winks" that they would not be treated harshly and they were free to alter their accounts before taking the witness stand.
Sir Basil disagreed.
Failure to raise the discrepancies, either in front of the tribunal or by giving the families' legal representatives a copy of the military statements, had robbed the families of a chance to explore them, Mr MacDonald said.
In his first account V details a clear sequence of events in which he fires at a man who has just thrown a bottle with a lighted fuse hanging from it.
Soldier V says he shot the man after he threw the bottle, after he had moved away from the crowd and was not presenting a threat. By the time he gave his second account verbally to lawyers preparing for the Widgery tribunal, Soldier V has compressed these events in such a way that doubt is cast over how much he appreciated whether the man was still presenting a danger, the inquiry, sitting in London, was told.
Sir Basil said he could not explain why this matter was not raised at Widgery.
The legal team had acted within professional standards at the time which have changed since. Now families would receive a copy of the statements, he said. He rejected claims that there was any conspiracy by the legal team to help protect the soldiers. Statements were taken from the soldiers without interference or the addition of a more acceptable military line, Sir Basil said.
He added: "In my view, you should not, in these cases, try and put things into the mouth of the individual." The Widgery inquiry largely exonerated the paratroopers, finding they had only shot in self-defence, believing there were IRA gunmen in the crowd.
The hearing was adjourned until today when Mr John Heritage, a member of the legal team at the Widgery inquiry, will be questioned about how statements were taken from soldiers to that investigation.