Relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims said yesterday they were horrified by the allegation that some of the 13 unarmed civilians shot dead in Derry 31 years ago could have been "aspirant entrants" to the IRA.
The claim was made by a former British army officer who, at the time of the Bogside killings, was in charge of the army's intelligence-gathering unit.
The former officer told the Saville inquiry that, although he knew in the immediate aftermath of the killings that none of the dead and none of the 13 wounded was prominent in the IRA, he could not discount the possibility that some had been. The witness, known to the inquiry as Soldier 1803, said he was based in the British army's operations room on Bloody Sunday when the names of the dead and wounded started coming in.
"I checked the records and found no trace of any of them being prominent in the IRA, as far as we knew.
"Three of the deceased or injured had minor records in our files, but nothing of substance, and I cannot remember who the three were," he said.
Cross-examined by Mr Barry MacDonald QC, for the majority of the victims' families, Soldier 1803 was asked if he therefore concluded that none of the people shot that day was involved in the IRA.
"No, my conclusion was that they were not prominent members of the IRA, but they could well be people who were exploited by the IRA, perhaps people who were aspirant entrants," the witness replied.
Asked on what basis he came to that view, the witness answered: "Because it was generally the case that the IRA would try to exploit people who might have been prepared to act in a sort of, rather, a way of bravado, in a reckless way and put themselves at risk and be manipulated by others who perhaps were more older and more experienced and more wily than they were."
Asked by Mr MacDonald how he assessed the issue of whether or not those shot were involved in the IRA, Soldier 1803 replied:
"Well, my assessment was that none of them were prominent members of the IRA that we knew about. I could not discount the possibility that they might have been or, alternatively, that they were people who were being used by the IRA.
"I cannot comment on it, really, in terms of knowing one way or the other.
"It was quite possible that some of them were deeply involved, but we did not know about that. I do not know.
"My job was merely to try and make an assessment based on what we knew, but at that time there was a considerable turmoil in the community, and events were moving very fast, and people that we did not know suddenly appeared quite quickly to be quite prominent," he said.
Mr Michael McKinney, speaking on behalf of the victims' families, said Soldier 1803's remarks sullied the reputation of those killed and wounded on Bloody Sunday.
"We object in the strongest possible terms to what this man has said," he said. "It is an outrage to suggest that the innocent of Bloody Sunday were aspiring to join the IRA. He was the man responsible for gathering and dissecting intelligence information and he knew on the day, as he knows today, that none of those shot was a member of the IRA.
"This is simply a blatant lie that is hurtful to the memories of those killed and hurtful to their families. If he had any substantial evidence detrimental to the deceased or wounded, he would have used it at the time and he would certainly have used it during his evidence today," he said.