Bloody Sunday inquiry hears legal argument
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry was hearing more legal argument today, this time over where ex-troops should testify to the mammoth investigation.
The inquiry, sitting at the Guildhall in Derry, was beginning two days of special hearings at which lawyers were thrashing out the options for military witnesses to give evidence.
The first soldiers are expected to give evidence early next year, and their legal representatives claim their lives will be endangered if they are called to Northern Ireland.
But relatives of the 13 men who were shot dead by troops in Derry on January 30, 1972, maintain that the soldiers should appear at the Guildhall in person in the interests of open justice.
The inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, is also considering remaining in Londonderry but hearing the soldiers’ evidence from an unspecified venue by video link - a proposal opposed by the families of the dead.
More than 220 civilians have so far given live evidence at public sittings of the tribunal, which was established three years ago to conduct a fresh probe into the circumstances of the shootings.
About 700 soldiers have provided statements to the inquiry but only 200 are likely to give evidence in person.
Politicians who are likely to be called include former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath and Ulster Unionist deputy leader John Taylor.
Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness is also to testify, having admitted being the Provisional IRA’s second-in-command in Derry on Bloody Sunday.
He denies claims by an MI5 agent, known only as Infliction, that he had confessed to firing the shot which precipitated Bloody Sunday.
Last week the tribunal ruled that it would admit a limited amount of intelligence material about civilian witnesses.
