The former British prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, yesterday insisted he was not responsible for the deaths of 13 people on Bloody Sunday nearly 31 years ago.
Giving evidence to the Saville inquiry in London, Sir Edward also refused to issue a fresh apology for what happened. Instead, the 86-year-old reiterated the "intense regret" he expressed at the time of the killings and said he stood by the findings of the first investigation into the events, Lord Widgery's, which largely exonerated the paratroopers.
Mr Michael Mansfield QC, acting for three of the victims' families, asked Sir Edward whether he had ever accepted that all those who died were members of the IRA, as had been suggested. Mr Heath said he did not accept that they were and said he had never asked himself since how the paratroopers came to shoot what Mr Mansfield called "13 innocent people".
In a heated exchange Mr Mansfield asked Sir Edward: "Do you accept any responsibility for the deaths?" Sir Edward: "No." Mr Mansfield: "Why is it that you do not accept any responsibility?" Sir Edward: "Because I had no responsibility for it . . . I have expressed my intense regret, which I did at the beginning. That continues and I fully appreciate the pain and the grief caused to their parents and their relatives."
Mr Mansfield suggested that Sir Edward had "shut off or evaded responsibility" for the events of Bloody Sunday, for which he was ultimately responsible as head of the British government.
But Sir Edward said that soldiers in the North at that time were accountable to their immediate superiors in the forces there and the Northern Irish administration at Stormont.
He accepted they were then accountable through the general chief-of-staff to Whitehall and ultimately the government, but that on some occasions the army took unauthorised action.
Mr Mansfield, who argued that Sir Edward's government did have responsibilities for security in the North at the time, asked: "The policy within which the British army was operating in the North of Ireland was the responsibility ultimately of the British government, was it not?"
Sir Edward replied: "No. The reason was, as we have learned since, that the action taken by part of the army was not in fact agreed or approved by those above them." This included the conditions under which soldiers could fire weapons in relation to Bloody Sunday, he told the hearing.
Sir Edward was given time to consider these "unauthorised actions" and is expected to be questioned on them in detail today.
Mr Mansfield put it to Sir Edward that senior army officers knew there was a "serious risk" that innocent civilians might get shot and killed if violence broke out on the march.
"The question is: they all knew. If they knew that, they would have to come to you and you would have to know," suggested Mr Mansfield.
But Sir Edward said: "They did not have to come to me and they did not come to me." Nothing was agreed "behind locked doors", and any suggestion it had been was "absolutely false", he added.
Earlier, the inquiry heard from a former Parachute Regiment officer on crowd control duty that day who said their superiors had told them to expect violence, including the possibility of petrol-bombers and snipers.
The hearing was adjourned until today. - (PA)