IRA hunger striker to appear at Saville inquiry
A former IRA hunger striker who may run as a Sinn Fein candidate in next year’s Northern Ireland Assembly election is to give evidence at the Bloody Sunday Tribunal on Thursday, it emerged today.
Raymond McCartney, a former IRA commanding officer in the Maze Prison, was jailed for killing English businessman Jeffrey Agate in the city in February 1977.
He is expected to tell the Saville Inquiry he was not a Provisional IRA member at the time of Bloody Sunday and to claim he joined them after the shootings.
Counsel for the Inquiry, Christopher Clarke QC, said Mr McCartney was called earlier than scheduled after an expert witness was unable to attend the Guildhall in Derry this week.
Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic expert who was asked to examine events on Bloody Sunday by Lord Saville, will now appear next Tuesday, September 10.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry resumed today after the summer recess as pressure mounted on the IRA to provide more testimonies about what happened on the day Paratroopers shot dead 13 civilians in the city. A fourteenth man injured on the day died later.
Lawyers, relatives and tribunal judges returned to Londonderry’s Guildhall from their summer recess after the inquiry’s chairman Lord Saville expressed frustration that there was little Provisional IRA evidence four years into his investigation.
He said their evidence was important but if they did not give it he would be asked to draw the conclusion they had something to conceal.
Six members of the official IRA are also due to give evidence.
The inquiry is also expected to hear evidence from rogue dirty tricks agent, Colin Wallace who was based at the Army’s headquarters in Lisburn at the time of Bloody Sunday.
