The Bloody Sunday Inquiry/Day 392: The chairman of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry said yesterday that the tribunal would take no action in the short term against Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, who has refused to tell the hearing the names of his Provisional IRA associates on Bloody Sunday.
The Sinn Féin Mid-Ulster MP told the inquiry during his two days in the witness box, on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, that out of "a code of honour", he would not, either in public or in private, reveal the names of people who were members of the Provisional IRA at the time of the Bloody Sunday killings in January 1972.
Mr McGuinness, who was second-in-command of the Provisional IRA locally when paratroopers shot dead 13 civilians and wounded 13 others during an anti-internment march in the Bogside area of Derry, was warned at the conclusion of his evidence by Lord Saville that the inquiry "will have to consider what steps we take in relation to your refusal to answer".
Yesterday, however, Lord Saville said that he and his two colleagues, Justice William Hoyt and Justice John Toohey, had considered overnight Mr McGuinness's stance.
The Law Lord said the inquiry acknowledged that Mr McGuinness has called on anyone with information about Bloody Sunday to give evidence. The chairman also said that the inquiry was itself attempting to identify IRA members from the time.
"As is well known, the inquiry has been engaged for some time in seeking statements from a number of witnesses who fall into the category I have described. Several witnesses have indeed come forward or have indicated an intention to do so, and several are in fact in the process of providing us with statements.
"That process is continuing. In the circumstances that have arisen, it seems to us as important as it can be that all relevant individuals do come forward as soon as possible. If they do, the significance of Mr McGuinness's refusal to tell us who they are may no longer have much, if any, significance. Consequently we take the view that the proper course for us now to take is to defer consideration of the question until we have seen the results of the process to which I have referred," he said.
Meanwhile the inquiry heard for the first time yesterday from a witness who was a member of the Official IRA on Bloody Sunday. Known as O IRA 2, and granted anonymity, he gave his evidence in Derry's Guildhall.
He told the 392nd day of the tribunal that he was a member of the Official IRA's command staff on Bloody Sunday and that, hours before the march, he went with another Official IRA member to retrieve a .303 rifle from "a static arms dump" in Colmcille Court.
The witness said that the rifle was damaged with its front sight either broken or missing but because the Officials were so poorly armed, they couldn't afford to lose any weapons.
"Just after we got the gun from the dump, we could hear some sort of confrontation going on at the junction of William Street and Chamberlain Street," he said.
"Just then I heard someone in the crowd shouting 'Two boys have been shot' or something like that," he added.
O IRA 2 said that the volunteer he was with then fired an aimed shot from the .303 rifle at a soldier they'd spotted on the roof of a Presbyterian church building on the edge of the Bogside. "He was aiming his rifle at the crowd and we both automatically assumed that he must have been the one who shot the boys," he said.
"The individual I was with took the .303 rifle we had collected, aimed it at the soldier on the roof of the Presbyterian church and fired one shot. I kept my eyes on the soldier as he did so and when he fired, I thought the soldier moved backwards and down, away from his position and out of sight."
The witness resumes his evidence to the inquiry on Monday.