No contempt action on McGuinness - Saville

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry is not going to take immediate action against Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness for refusing to identify…

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry is not going to take immediate action against Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness for refusing to identify IRA members on Bloody Sunday.

A spokesman for the inquiry said they were trying to find out the names of members of the IRA on Bloody Sunday. If this proves unsuccessful then contempt proceedings could follow.

But he said; "Contempt is not an option currently being considered. The inquiry is currently engaged in an exercise to find the names of PIRA members on Bloody Sunday.

"This has produced a number of statements so far and there are more in the pipeline."

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Mr McGuinness yesterday questioned the independence of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. On the second day of his evidence to the inquiry, the Sinn Féin MP, who became OC of the Provisional IRA in Derry two weeks after the killing by paratroopers of 13 civilians in the city in January 1972, also accused the inquiry of having a fixation about him.

He said he would "rather die" than "betray" other IRA members by naming them at the inquiry.

Mr McGuinness, who said he left the Provisional IRA "in the early 1970s", had earlier accused the inquiry of having a fixation about him.

"I thought I was here to talk about Bloody Sunday. It appears to me that I am talking about everything but Bloody Sunday, so there is a fixation with all sorts of events in and around Bloody Sunday," he said.

"This is not the Martin McGuinness tribunal, this is the Bloody Sunday tribunal. I have to say I think that this tribunal has had a fixation with Martin McGuinness going back quite a number of years," Mr McGuinness added.