The man who took photographs on Bloody Sunday that were flashed round the world claimed he feared for the material that night after hearing troops were under orders to apprehend him.
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Grimaldi’s photograph of Barney McGuigan lying dead while others protect themselves from gunfire.
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Mr Fulvio Grimaldi said he was told to stay in a house in Derry's Bogside by "some boys in charge of the no-go area" until the early hours after the shootings.
He was then driven across the Border to Dublin - and only then did he file his first radio report.
Mr Grimaldi, who was then a photo-journalist, took the photographs of the then Father Edward Daly - who became Bishop of Derry - waving a blood-stained handkerchief as a white flag in a bid to take a dying teenager to safety from the car park of the Rossville Flats.
He also took the picture of Barney McGuigan lying face up in a pool of blood on the other side of the complex.
Mr Grimaldi described horrifying scenes during heavy British army gunfire, including seeing Mr McGuigan shot in the head as he attempted to go to the aid of the dying Patrick Doherty.
"His head jerked back, his face whipped round to the left, his body spun around and he collapsed."
Mr Grimaldi said that that evening he and his girlfriend and assistant Ms Susan North - who was taping the sounds of the day - stopped in a house in the Bogside where he was told that "over the army radio soldiers had been told to apprehend an Italian photographer and his colleague or wife who were moving in the Bogside".
He added: "They were to use any means necessary. It made me very concerned about my materials and recordings. There were very few journalists who were in the know.
"My relationship with the RUC and[British] army was not good. The RUC would often swear at me in the street and so on. They thought I was too friendly with the Catholic community.
"After I had sent the things that I had seen and after hearing evidence that I was to be apprehended, I wanted to get my material out of the area."
Mr Grimaldi said he was told the stay in the house by some "boys in charge of the no-go area" - Derry's Bogside and the Creggan estate were then off-limits to security forces.
He added: "In the early hours of the following morning I was taken by car to the Border. We changed cars at the Border and I was taken to Dublin where I did my first radio report.
"I did not know who took me away. I did not ask names but I thought they were from the Republic."
PA