A witness supplied a list of nine names to the inquiry yesterday after being asked about members of the Provisional and Official IRA with whom he spoke shortly before Bloody Sunday.
Mr Eamon Melaugh said he had advised both paramilitary organisations not to bring weapons into the area on the day of the planned Civil Rights protest march in Derry, and not to be provoked into firing shots. He said that the consensus of opinion in response to his approaches to some of the leadership of both wings of the IRA was that there would be no weapons in the area.
Asked by counsel to the tribunal, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, if he would be prepared to write down the names of the IRA leaders he spoke to, he replied: "Because you already have their names, yes, I could write them down." The witness wrote six names, and over the lunch adjournment supplied a further three.
In reply to Mr Clarke, he agreed that five were official IRA members, three were Provisionals and one "could have been a member of either".
Mr Clarke revealed that one name was that of Mr Reg Tester, who has not sought anonymity and has supplied a statement to the tribunal in which he states that he was quartermaster of the Official IRA in the city at the time of Bloody Sunday.
Earlier this month the tribunal agreed to extend anonymity, on the same basis as that granted to British soldiers, to five former Official IRA members who wish to give evidence about their role on Bloody Sunday.
The tribunal has, however, complained that "a wall of silence" surrounds the membership of the Provisional IRA at the time, other than Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein who has now supplied a statement in which, it is understood, he acknowledges his former IRA role.
The tribunal chairman, Lord Saville, yesterday asked Mr Melaugh to let the tribunal know "if any further names do come into your memory", and the witness replied that, "Based on my personal safety, this could be a very tricky thing - I could have men knocking on my door demanding explanations of me".
Earlier in evidence, Mr Melaugh, who was carrying two cameras on Bloody Sunday and took a number of photographs of the dead and wounded, asserted that he was the closest civilian to the first two armoured-personnel vehicles that entered the Bogside on January 30th, 1972.
He said that a rubber bullet gun was first fired from a slit in the side of the first vehicle, and immediately afterwards two rounds were discharged from a self-loading rifle (SLR) which was protruding from another slit. "To me it was totally ridiculous to fire at this time because the army were under no conceivable threat from anyone at this time," he said.
He also described being only a few feet away from one of the fatal victims, Mr Hugh Gilmore, when Mr Gilmore was hit by a high-velocity bullet on Rossville Street.
The witness said: "I found it an incredulous (sic) situation that a young man who was not involved in stone throwing, petrol bombing or shooting could have his life terminated in a fraction of seconds . . . "
Mr Melaugh also said that he had been a committee member of the Derry Civil Rights Association, but had left that post several weeks before Bloody Sunday. Replying to Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of military witnesses, Mr Melaugh agreed that it was widely known that Mr Reg Tester was both an Official IRA man and also a member of the committee. He (witness) thought he should not be a member of both.
The inquiry continues today.