Former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath has again rejected claims that he knew unarmed protesters could be killed or injured in the civil rights march which led to the Bloody Sunday massacre in January 1972..
At the Saville inquiry yesterday into the 13 deaths, Mr Michael Mansfield QC, for three of the victims' families, put it to Sir Edward that he had been briefed that the demonstration carried a "real and inevitable risk" of a "shooting war" with IRA gunmen.
The march gave the British army an opportunity to mount a "specific and substantial arrest operation", Mr Mansfield suggested, and there was a "serious, foreseeable risk" that unarmed civilians would be shot. Any casualties had therefore to be accepted as a price to be paid and the responsibility for the injuries could be attributed to the organisers of the illegal march, he added.
Mr Mansfield said sending troops into the Bogside must have been government policy and known by the Chief of General Staff, Lord Carver, either formally or informally, and Sir Edward.
Sir Edward (86) told the hearing in central London: "I understand what you are saying and I reject them." He has denied being responsible for the deaths and said that Bloody Sunday may have arisen out of "unauthorised actions" by the British army soldiers.
During the hearing, Sir Edward was shown a transcript of a telephone conversation with then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, on the evening of the killings.
In them, Mr Mansfield said, Sir Edward never expressed any shock or horror at what had happened. Sir Edward told Mr Lynch that the IRA was "bound to intervene" at the march and that the organisers of the demonstration carried a "heavy responsibility" for what happened.
Mr Mansfield suggested that other witnesses had inferred that Mr Heath was briefed about the risks and had even tried to put pressure on the army to take action against rioters, including shooting them.
Sir Edward repeatedly rejected the claims, in particular the crowd-control "shooting" policy contained in a memo by the Commander Land Forces in Northern Ireland, Maj Gen Robert Ford.
"I told the British public the truth. In your case you have failed to do that, in particular you and your friends who have said that in that particular period we had deliberately organised bloodshed and then failed to do anything about it and it had all been built up."
- (PA)