THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 212: MI5 lawyers and senior officers will convene with Saville tribunal judges and counsel in private session at an undisclosed location today. They will present secret material in support of a controversial application to be heard next Monday.
Lawyers for the Bloody Sunday victims' families and for the soldiers involved in the shootings are excluded from the closed session, and no details of the proceedings will be made public.
The ex-parte application to be made behind closed doors by MI5 today, probably in London, is related to a claim to be advanced in public session on Monday for Public Interest Immunity (PII) in respect of Security Service material and oral evidence to be given by MI5 personnel and former agent David Shayler.
A spokesman for the inquiry said: "No notice will be given of the subject or the content of the ex-parte application."
The "open" part of the PII application asserts there will be grave risk to the life of the agent/informer known as "Infliction" if his identity is revealed.
The British Home Office and MI5 want exceptional restrictions on the hearing of evidence by security service witnesses.The public, the media and lawyers for the victims' families and the soldiers will be excluded under the proposed restrictions.
Questions supplied in advance would be put to the agents by the inquiry's counsel.The replies would be held back for an hour to allow MI5 officers to examine them and remove any "sensitive" material before the transcript is made public.
Representatives of the families claimed yesterday that the main purpose of the unprecedented "time-delay" procedure set out in the application is to control any unwelcome or sensitive revelations made in the witness box by the whistleblower, Mr Shayler.
A senior Derry policeman claimed yesterday he and his colleagues were shocked by the events on Bloody Sunday and were "particularly concerned that RUC advice had been ignored and as a result 13 local people were dead".
Chief Inspector Douglas Hogg of the PSNI said he was an RUC constable in the city at the time, and there was no sense of elation among officers after the killings.
He said that some years later he spoke to the senior Derry RUC officer, Chief Supt Frank Lagan, about the Bloody Sunday events.
Supt Lagan had advised the British army not to block off the route of the planned Civil Rights march, but to allow it to continue through to the Guildhall.
"He believed that you should never block people into a corner in these situations and that you should always allow a large crowd an escape route," the witness said.
"He explained that otherwise, even if the people at the front of the crowd wanted to retreat, they would be unable to because of the crowd behind them.This would inevitably lead to confrontations and violence," Chief Insp Hogg added.
The inquiry is scheduled to resume on Monday.