THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 247: A former paratrooper said today he fabricated his original eyewitness account of the Bloody Sunday shootings that put soldiers in a positive light.
The radio operator in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment's anti-tank platoon was taken line-by-line through his statement to the Royal Military Police (RMP) given days after Bloody Sunday when paratroopers killed 13 unarmed men on a Derry civil rights march on January 30th, 1972.
Today he rejected claims made in this account that he saw gunmen and petrol bombers, saying: "I believe in the first statement which I made I used fabrication - it was coming from me."
The soldier, identified only as 027, told the Saville inquiry sitting in London: "I'm unable now to recollect precisely my frame of mind or outlook but I believe I would have felt it to be the appropriate and correct thing to do at the time."
His account differs from the official British army view that only justifiable shootings were carried out against rioting gun men and bombers, the inquiry was told.
Soldier 027 contends that his RMP statement includes facts that have been "altered and added" as justification for the shootings.
Under questioning by Christopher Clarke QC, counsel for the inquiry, 027 also rejected his original claim that he heard several shots from different calibre weapons coming from Chamberlain Street and Pilot Row.
"I believe that report of weapons firing to be untrue," he said. Soldier 027 said there was a possibility that a shot landed within yards of an armoured vehicle.
"I believe what I'm saying is that I'm not excluding the possibility that a shot was struck," he said.
Soldier 027 also denied his initial claim that he heard someone shout "sniper" as the soldiers sheltered behind the wall at Kells Walk.
He told the inquiry: "I don't believe its true".
He accepted that he would have known it was untrue at the time. Soldier 027 admitted that some of his RMP statement, taken on February 5th, 1972, was lies.
He never saw a man with a rifle in Rossville Street, did not hear shots being fired from the Glenfada Park area before they moved from Rossville Street, or saw a man with a petrol bomb in Glenfada Park.
It was all a "complete fabrication", he admitted, so he could record what was the "least detrimental" to the men in his section.
Asked if his fabricated account had been written to preserve the battalion's reputation or if it had been discussed with others, Soldier 027 said:
"At this time I think that there would not have been a great deal of analysis.
"I have no memory now of particular exchanges but a group of soldiers tends towards a group mentality. I do not think I was acting as an individual at the time." His statement to the Widgery Tribunal, which originally investigated Bloody Sunday, was crafted in order to prevent "dropping people directly in it", the tribunal was told.
Soldier 027 said it excluded names and anything about the manner in which people were shot because he "wished to avoid doing anything that would reflect badly on the army".
He was attempting to be as frank as possible while ensuring that no individual could be connected to any specific incident.
He said he could not recall the process of giving or signing the statement, which is similar but not identical to his RMP statement. It includes expanded references and verbatim extracts from his fabricated RMP statement.
In his Saville inquiry statement, 027 stated that he was describing the gunfire from Kells Walk to the rubble barricade in his original statement when the lawyer stood, expressed surprise and said something like "we can't have that, can we, Private? That makes it sound as if shots were being fired into the crowd".
On the stand today, 027 said he recalled a lawyer leaving the room as he prepared a statement and then returning with a statement which he signed.
He told the inquiry that in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday the paras had tense discussions in their armoured van about how many of the 108 rounds they fired would be acceptable and justifiable.