THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY: A barrister yesterday asked the tribunal to order the journalist Mary Holland to disclose the name of a wounded IRA gunman she interviewed in the week following Bloody Sunday.
The chairman, Lord Saville, told Ms Holland, who is now an Irish Times columnist, that there was a possibility they might require her to return to the inquiry at a later stage to identify her source.
Ms Holland was the latest in a series of media witnesses who have refused to identify interviewees or informants who spoke to them on the basis of anonymity or confidentiality.
She confirmed that, working for the Observer at the time, she went to Derry after the shootings of January 30th, 1972, to research material as part of an investigation by the paper into what had happened.
She became aware that the then editor, David Astor, had been asked not to publish the planned investigation as it might prejudice the Widgery inquiry, and she was "unhappy about this interference in the editorial independence of the newspaper".
However, the following Sunday the Observer did print a story she wrote, "How the IRA gained a sniper", which detailed a conversation she had with an Official IRA sniper after Bloody Sunday. It was intended to explain how a young man might go from being apolitical to joining the IRA.
The article did not name the man, and Ms Holland said she was not prepared to "reveal a source who gave me an interview under conditions of confidentiality".
Earlier, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, quoted from Sunday Times journalists' notes indicating that this man, who was said to have fired after the army shootings ended, could be a person called Mickey Doherty. Ms Holland refused to say whether this was her interviewee.
At the conclusion of her evidence, the chairman told Ms Holland: "We are not minded at this moment to require you to identify your source.
"If the situation changes, then of course we would notify you, and in the circumstances of course you would be entitled to have legal advice and representation."
Another witness, Mr Robert Ferris, denied that, as secretary of a Derry shopkeepers' association, he had urged the British army to adopt hardline measures against rioters, gunmen and bombers.
Mr Ferris, a former chairman of Derry Young Unionists, was questioned about a memo prepared by Gen Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces (Northern Ireland), in January 1972. The memo followed a meeting the general had with the Strand Road Traders' Association.
Gen Ford's memo noted that the traders wanted "at a minimum, the Rossville Flats cleared . . . and ideally the Creggan and Bogside occupied. They also wanted curfews and shooting on sight."
Mr Ferris said such comments were not expressed at the meeting.
The inquiry continues today, its 201st day.