Day 321 A former British soldier who claimed he shot a petrol bomber on Bloody Sunday was yesterday accused of murder.
The allegation was made by Mr Barry MacDonald QC, who accused the former soldier of the murder of Jackie Duddy, one of 13 people shot dead by paratroopers in Derry on January 30th, 1972.
Mr Duddy, a 17-year-old weaver, was shot in the back of the shoulder as he ran from paratroopers alongside Father Edward Daly, who later became Bishop of Derry. He was described as "a young boy" by counsel to the inquiry, Mr Christopher Clarke QC.
The circumstances surrounding the youth's death were investigated soon after Bloody Sunday by RUC detectives. A superintendent for the RUC's then chief constable reported in July 1972 that the soldier who fired the fatal shot "is clearly guilty of murder, but, as he has not been identified, no further action can be taken".
Yesterday a soldier known as Soldier V told the inquiry that minutes after he was deployed in the Bogside he took aim and fired at a man he'd seen throwing a petrol bomb towards a soldier.
Soldier V was the first former paratrooper to be accused of murder since the tribunal opened in April 1998. He said he was still convinced that he "engaged a legal target" and added that, "put into a similar or the exact same situation now, I would do the same again. So although my powers of explanation may not be good, what I did on the ground, under fire, is correct".
He said that although there were discrepancies in statements he made to British army officers and to a solicitor shortly after Bloody Sunday, they were not designed to cover up his actions.
Soldier V admitted that he told the original Widgery inquiry into the killings that after he'd shot his victim in the stomach, a group of people approached the body with their hands in the air waving white handkerchiefs.
One of the civilians, he said, was a priest in clerical clothes.