The former Westminster MP, Ms Bernadette McAliskey, told the inquiry yesterday that the Bloody Sunday killings had, in her view, made death an integral part of the equation of seeking justice in Northern Ireland.
She said that on that day the British army had "declared war on those seeking justice". This had led to years of torture, sorrow, pain and imprisonment, and more than 3,000 subsequent deaths.
Announcing that she had deep misgivings about taking part in the inquiry, she said that charges should be brought against the British government in the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and international jurists should decide if there was a case to answer.
There was applause from the public gallery when she commented: "This [inquiry] should be held somewhere else where the accused is not running the party." Ms McAliskey said she did not question the individual integrity of those conducting the inquiry but did not think it could provide truth and justice in this matter.
"No inquiry established, funded and controlled by such a powerful, vindictive, ruthless and experienced perpetrator of terror as the British state can reasonably be expected to bring in an honourable verdict of `guilty as charged' against that state."
She said she would refuse on principle to be drawn into identifying individuals for the inquiry, and she several times objected to questions on details which, she said, had not the slightest bearing on Bloody Sunday.
There was a danger of a "great big cloud" being created that would confuse the final issue. That issue was that the government of the day had ordered the army to shoot citizens, "and I do not think it matters . . . if the entire Brigade of the Provisional IRA, aided and abetted by the Official IRA and Saor Eire and Saor Uladh and anybody else they can gather up for the occasion were conspiring to take on the British army on that day".
Even if any of that was true - and she did not believe it - it did not justify the army opening fire on the civilian population at that demonstration.
The tribunal chairman, Lord Saville, asked her to bear with them. Ms McAliskey, whose appearance on the witness stand was delayed for several hours while she held discussions with tribunal lawyers, said she had agreed to participate as a witness only out of respect for the relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims. She herself had never asked for a public inquiry and did not believe that was the way to address the matter.
She gave a vivid description of how she remembered the firing starting as she was on the lorry that served as a platform for the speakers who were about to address the crowd at Free Derry Corner on Bloody Sunday.
She heard the first shots coming directly from her right. She believed them to have been fired from the city walls by the soldiers positioned there. Then her recollection was of telling the crowd not to be afraid, that the soldiers were firing over their heads or firing blanks.
But, as there were further shots, she added: "I can hear my own voice with my own ears as if neither ears nor voice belonged to me. Inside my head I hear my own voice without any connection to my mouth instinctively silently repeating the ritual prayers for the dying.
"I am under the platform. I do not clearly recollect how I got there. I still have the microphone in my hand. I am watching, still urging people to move quickly away . . . My clearest and abiding memory of that day is the physical sensation of terror.
"I could taste it in my mouth. I could feel it as a dull weight in the base of my spine. I could feel its grip in my stomach and yet I was numb . . . I was aware that I was simultaneously both part of and yet removed from the unreality I was witnessing."
As counsel to the inquiry, Mr Christopher Clarke, proposed to show her a video of television footage with a view to asking her if she could identify a person being interviewed in it, Ms McAliskey told him: "Whether I could or not, I am not going to tell you . . . Once I identify anybody, I then have to come to a position as to why I may not identify the next person, and inferences may be drawn . . ."
She said it was best, before she looked at anything, "to tell you that in principle I have never assisted her majesty's government in identifying a citizen of this country other than myself. I do not propose to start now".
She said she was an MP for Mid-Ulster at the time, but she had been prevented by the government from exercising her "right and duty to give an eyewitness account to parliament" of what she had seen.