Man denies Bloody Sunday stone-throwing claim
One of the men detained on Bloody Sunday today denied a soldier’s claim that he had been rioting that day.
Hugh O’Boyle rejected the allegations, made by a Sergeant identified only as 1694, that he was throwing stones on Derry’s Rossville Street.
Public order charges against Mr O’Boyle were withdrawn in the months following Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, like those against the 50-odd other people arrested that day.
Giving evidence at the inquiry which is re-investigating the killings of 13 men on Bloody Sunday, Mr O’Boyle recalled seeing one - probably Michael Kelly - shot beside the rubble barricade across Rossville Street.
Members of 1 Para who opened fire in Derry’s Bogside that day were officially deployed in the city to conduct an arrest operation during a big civil rights march.
But relatives of those who died maintain that the arrests were cover for a plan to kill.
Mr O’Boyle told the inquiry he was hiding behind a car on Glenfada Park - probably the most controversial scene of the shootings - when he was arrested along with other people seeking shelter, among them a boy aged about 12.
A report filled in by the authorities at Fort George later that afternoon quoted Sergeant 1694 saying Mr O’Boyle had been throwing stones.
Asked by Counsel to the Inquiry Alan Roxburgh if he had been throwing stones, Mr O’Boyle replied: ‘‘I was not, no.’’
