THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/DAY 334: A former soldier denied yesterday that he shot and personally supervised the shooting of innocent civilians in the Bogside area of Derry on Bloody Sunday.
The former soldier, who was a sergeant in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute regiment, whose members killed 13 unarmed civilians and wounded 13 others during an illegal civil rights march on January 30th, 1972, told the inquiry into the killings that while innocent civilians were shot dead, they were not killed deliberately.
The witness, known as Sgt O, who claimed he shot two IRA gunmen on Bloody Sunday and that up to 20 shots had been fired at him by IRA snipers, rejected a suggestion that he had, by his own behaviour in firing 12 shots, encouraged other members of his platoon to shoot.
Barrister Barry MacDonald, QC, who represents most of the families of the Bloody Sunday victims, alleged to Soldier O that he had "participated in the shooting of innocent civilians and you had personally supervised your men as they engaged in the shooting of innocent civilians".
Sgt O said that allegation was untrue.
"The whole concept was not wrong. The scoop operation was correct. If it worked we would have got a lot of people off the ground. We came under fire, we returned fire, it was not wrong from that point of view", he said.
The witness, who said that up to 120 shots were fired at paratroopers deployed into the Bogside, added that he was alarmed by the amount of shooting on Bloody Sunday.
"Anybody who has been through an incident, through a riot which has escalated into that, has to be a bit pumped up. Adrenaline is running, adrenaline is a chemical reaction to help you through things like this. It does work, which is why athletes take injections of it and so on. Yes, I was pumped up", he told Mr MacDonald.
Sgt O said that the actions of some of the paratroopers on the day was wrong.
"Obviously innocent civilians got hit. I have got no doubt about that, but I do not believe they were hit deliberately because I was there, I seen people with weapons, I know that we returned fire and I could only talk about what I personally was involved in. I cannot talk about Glenfada Park (where five of the 13 victims were shot dead) or other places or what other paras did. I can only talk about what I did and what I saw", he told the inquiry's three judges.
The inquiry was adjourned until Monday week.