Day 434: On the final day of his closing statement to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, the inquiry's counsel, raised the possibility that four nail-bombs found on the body of one of the 13 people shot dead in Derry on January 30th, 1972, had been planted.
Mr Gerry Donaghy was shot dead alongside Mr Gerry McKinney in the Abbey Park-Glenfada Park area of the Bogside. In that area four of the 13 people killed on Bloody Sunday by army paratroopers were shot dead and five others wounded.
Mr Clarke described the subsequent discovery of four nail-bombs on Mr Donaghy's body as "the final area of controversy" relating to the Abbey Park-Glenfada Park area.
He said there was evidence from military and civilian witnesses that some people had weapons or nail-bombs in that area. After he'd been shot, Mr Clarke said Mr Donaghy, who was a member of the junior wing of the Provisional IRA, was carried into a nearby house and examined by a doctor.
Neither the doctor nor other civilians who tended to the dying teenager noticed nail-bombs on his person. Mr Clarke said the fatally-wounded Mr Donaghy was driven towards Altnagelvin Hospital by a civilian but the car was stopped at an army barrier in Barrack Street, on the edge of the scene of the Bogside killings.
One of the soldiers, known as Soldier 150, got into the car. "It appears that he, Soldier 135, Soldier 145 and RUC Sergeant Keyes all looked to Mr Donaghy before the car left Barrack Street, but none of these men noticed nail-bombs on his person," he told the inquiry's three judges.
Mr Clarke said Soldier 150 then drove the car to his company headquarters at Henrietta Street and then onto an army camp at Foyle Street.
There he checked Mr Donaghy's body for a pulse before a medical officer arrived.
Again, he said, Soldier 150 did not see four nail-bombs, nor did the medical officer who pronounced Mr Donaghy dead.
Mr Clarke said the sequence of events that followed was a matter of considerable debate.
"There are thus three broad possibilities that can explain how the nail-bombs came to be, by this stage, upon his person. Each of them has, as I indicated in opening, associated problems.
"The first is that the nail-bombs were at all material times on his person and he had been in possession of them before he was shot.
"The second is that the bombs were planted on him at barrier 20 or conceivably in Henrietta Street. The tribunal may think this is the least likely scenario.
"Thirdly, that the nail bombs were planted on him at the regimental aid post, either by RUC officers or members of the Royal Anglians or a combination of the two," he said.
"Fourthly, the question arises as to why any planter would have risked planting four nail-bombs when one would have had the same effect," Mr Clarke added.
He said it was difficult to believe that all of the civilian witnesses who had attended to Mr Donaghy after he'd been shot had failed to see the nail-bombs.
"It seems difficult to believe that all of them either failed to notice any of the bombs or, having noticed them, were content to leave them on Mr Donaghy's body despite the risks, both physical and penal, in doing so.
"It seems difficult to believe that the police or the army at Barrack Street had four nail-bombs with them there, planted them on Mr Donaghy during a short interval of time, and then sent Soldier 150 off with the body and the nail-bombs without telling him.
"Lastly, it seems difficult to believe that four bombs were planted at the regimental aid post, although there would have been a limited opportunity to do so," he said.
"But if everything that is difficult to credit is rejected, the end result is that there were never any nail-bombs on Gerard Donaghy at all, when there plainly were.
"It is for the tribunal to decide what conclusions it feels able to reach as to what probably happened or, perhaps, as to what is least unlikely to have happened," he said.