BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY: A former British soldier admitted yesterday that he had told lies to Royal Military Police officers about hearing sub-machine gun fire in Derry on Bloody Sunday.
The now retired Royal Green Jackets rifleman also told the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings that he had "increasingly come to regret" telling the RMPs that he had heard the sub-machine gun fire both immediately before and after paratroopers were deployed into the Bogside area of Derry on January 30th, 1972.
After their deployment into the area, the paratroopers shot dead 13 civilians and wounded 13 others. Yesterday the former soldier, who was screened while giving his evidence, told the 350th day of the inquiry that five days after the shootings he told the RMPs that he had heard between 12 and 14 Thompson sub-machine gun shots when he was stationed behind a barrier at William Street, several hundred yards from the scene of the killings.
"I have a conscience. I have thought about this for 28 years and there is one matter in my statement I want to put right. In the statement, I said that I heard machine gun fire both before and after the paras entered the Bogside. I did not," he told the inquiry. "I have wondered for the past 28 years why I said I heard gunfire. I can't really remember how it came about but I have increasingly come to regret it. The families of the deceased have a right to know the truth of what happened."
The witness said that even though there was a rivalry between his regiment and the paratroopers, they still considered them to be comrades.
"The virtues of loyalty and honouring the code were drilled into us in training and we did not question whether the paras had been fired upon. That's where the loyalty comes out - we all simply assumed that they had been fired at," he told the inquiry's three judges.
"Even if we hadn't heard any shooting, it was second nature to us to close ranks, almost like a collective security thing. In the reverse situation, we would have expected them to do the same for us. I have been asked whether we all got together and decided what we were going to do, but we didn't have to - we just knew automatically that we had to help the paras out when they were under pressure," he said.
The witness said he only realised there had been deaths after he returned to barracks.
"We heard originally that two people were dead and that it was 'them not us' and there were cheers. I didn't cheer at hearing that people had died. The greater number of reported deaths the more people cheered. There were a couple of others in the same mindset as me who were also not cheering, but the vast majority of my regiment were. Unfortunately, that's what the armed forced are like - brutality will out. It's a shame," he said.
Asked by counsel to the inquiry, Ms Cathryn McGahey, why he had "made up" such a story to the RMPs, the former Royal Green Jackets rifleman said he did so because "it developed like osmosis". He said he had not been pressurised by anyone to lie about the shootings.
"There were no shots," he said. "I am very strong in my belief that I did not hear it," he added.
The witness denied an assertion by barrister Mr Edwin Glasgow, QC, who represents most of the Bloody Sunday soldiers, that his evidence was "coloured by the fact that your personal sympathies lay with the nationalist community". The former soldier said his evidence was "just a quest for the truth".
The inquiry continues today.