The members of the Parachute Regiment involved in the Bloody Sunday killings may have wanted to show their colleagues "how the job should be done", it was suggested today.
Other soldiers in 8 Brigade, which covered Derry in January 1972, believed the paras were deployed because they always took a strong line, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, sitting in central London, was told.
British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed men on a Derry civil rights march on January 30th, 1972.
Maj INQ 1025 was an Assistant Adjutant on Bloody Sunday acting as the administrator for the Commanding Officer of 22nd Light Air Defence Regiment (LADR), Col Jimmy Ferguson. His company was commanding all the barriers on Bloody Sunday.
A diary note, dated March 18th, 1972, from a LADR lieutenant records a conversation the pair had a few weeks after Bloody Sunday.
The diary entry reads: "INQ 1025 was later told later that the whole affair was not so much to teach the Bogsiders a lesson but to show 8 Brigade and its units how it should be done by the so-called experts".
Mr Bilal Rawat, for the inquiry, said this suggested the paras had been brought in to show local units in Derry "how the job should be done".
Major INQ 1025 said this had been a "pretty commonly" held opinion among local soldiers of the paras but there was nothing official to back it up.
PA