A Senior British police officer in charge of the operation in which an IRA suspect, Mr Diarmuid O'Neill, was shot in 1996, admitted yesterday that as far as the shooting was concerned the operation "went wrong", but that he would not have done anything else differently.
Det Chief Supt John Bunn, of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, was giving evidence at Kingston Crown Court, in southwest London on the opening day of the inquest into Mr O'Neill's death.
However, asked by Mr Michael Mansfield QC, for the O'Neill family, if he had learned any lessons from what had happened during the operation, he replied: "I still believe that it [the operation] was correct until the last moment. I don't think anything could have been done to stop that . . . I can't say to you this is what I would have done differently."
The inquest into Mr O'Neill's death comes nearly 3 1/2 years after he was shot in September 1996 during a raid on a hotel in Hammersmith, west London, where police believed he and four members of an IRA active service unit were planning a bombing campaign.
Mr O'Neill, who was unarmed, was shot at least six times, and three members of the IRA cell, Brian McHugh, Patrick Kelly and James Murphy, were sentenced to a total of 62 years in 1997.