One-time civil rights leaders today defended the decision to bring people on to the streets on what became known as Bloody Sunday as they gave evidence nearly three decades on.
Four executive members of the long-defunct Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association appeared before the Saville Inquiry to given evidence about the handling of the demonstration in Derry on January 30 1972 which ended with 13 Catholic men shot dead.
One, Mrs Brid Ruddy, told the tribunal about the three big anti-internment marches organised by the association early in 1972 and said: "NICRA was being pressurised by their communities to help people voice their demands.
"They had to give them those three marches and they did the best they could to make them safe as possible. Any deaths that day were a direct result of those people who opened fire on innocent people."
The inquiry, sitting in public in Derry's Guildhall, also heard from a woman who saw one of the victims, Mr William Nash, shot dead as he ran away from Paratroopers sent in to the city's Bogside on what was officially designated an arrest operation in the aftermath of the parade.
Mrs Lettie Donnelly said she then saw Mr Nash's father, Alexander, trying to rescue the teenager lying dead or dying on a rubble barricade, only to be himself shot in the arm.
Mrs Donnelly also claimed the body of Mr William Nash (19) was flung into the back of an Armoured Personnel Carrier by the hair and feet as his wounded father continued calling out that his son had been shot.
Mr Nash snr survived his injuries. Another of the wounded, Mr John Johnston, died six months later.
Another of the NICRA activists, Mrs Margo Rice, recalled the gunfire erupting as she was about to mount a platform to address the rally.
She claimed she was preparing to hoist herself on to the flatbed lorry at Free Derry Corner where Miss Bernadette Devlin was already speaking. She said she looked up at Miss Devlin who seemed to freeze and then started to shout at people to get down.
"As I did a whistling noise flew past me from behind me. It sounded like bullets being fired."
Mrs Rice also claimed she saw a gunman appearing and then vanishing again after the Army shootings and in an area well clear of the troops on the ground.
Earlier the first NICRA official to enter the witness box today, Mr Jimmy Doris, said he noticed an "obvious" change in Army policy on the eve of Bloody Sunday when troops managed to block a march from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, to the neighbouring town of Coalisland.
He assumed it was a result of Unionist Party pressure being applied at the time by the Joint Security Committee - chaired by Ulster Unionist deputy leader John Taylor on January 28 - and urged the inquiry to inspect the committee's minutes.
However he said no blame attached to either NICRA or the Derry Civil Rights Association for what happened on Bloody Sunday, although "with the obvious benefit of hindsight, if the Executive had known that the Army was going to shoot dead 14 civilians we would never have approved the march".
Mr Doris also dismissed the contents of an RUC Special Branch assessment which described 11 of the 14 NICRA executive members, including himself, as "republican". He said had never belonged to any republican organisation, nor had he ever supported any republican organisation.
The inquiry resumes tomorrow.
PA