An RUC investigation after Bloody Sunday concluded that 17-year-old Jackie Duddy was murdered, but that no further action could be taken because the soldier who fired the fatal shot had not been identified, the inquiry has been told.
Jackie Duddy was the youth who was shot as he ran from the troops in the Rossville Flats car-park with Father Edward Daly running at his side.
Mr Arthur Harvey QC noted that, on the soldiers' accounts of the shots they had fired, there was no explanation for the shooting of Mr Duddy. The police investigation had concluded that he was murdered but that no soldier could be made accountable.
The document which records the RUC investigation mentioned by Mr Harvey is dated July 3rd, 1972, and is part of the body of written evidence in the possession of the present inquiry. A copy of it was seen yesterday by journalists at the inquiry.
The document is signed by an RUC superintendent, for the chief constable, and appears to have been sent from RUC headquarters in Belfast to the office of the Northern Ireland DPP.
It states in relation to Mr Duddy: "There is no evidence to establish which member of the army fired the fatal shot, but it is clear that he had just dismounted from the APC [armoured personnel carrier] before doing so.
"In my opinion he is clearly guilty of murder but as he has not been identified, no further action can be taken."
Counsel yesterday adverted to photographic and eyewitness evidence concerning many of the deceased and the wounded to show they were not carrying weapons before they were shot. He asserted most of them could not be accounted for on the basis of the soldiers' own descriptions of the targets they were firing at.
Mr Harvey said the four who were killed in the Glenfada Park/Abbey Park sector could not be accounted for by what the soldiers said they did. In particular, the deaths of William McKinney and Jim Wray could not be accounted for by any of the shots allegedly fired by the soldiers, because they were shot in the back.
There was evidence from a witness that a soldier shot Jim Wray while he was on the ground.
The bullet of Soldier G had been recovered from the body of Gerard Donaghy (17), who died in Abbey Park, Mr Harvey noted. Soldier G, in reply to counsel for the army at the Widgery tribunal, had admitted firing through the alleyway into Abbey Park, but that was not taken up. Soldier G was never asked any question, by counsel for that tribunal or by counsel for the relatives, about the murder of Gerard Donaghy.
Mr Harvey said: "That must go down to the fundamental inability of two counsel to prepare so many cases representing so many people in such a short space and period of time. There can be no other explanation for it."
In relation to the accounts given by the soldiers after Bloody Sunday, he said: "When one looks at those sectors that I have done to date, all that one can say is: one has not heard the truth."
The inquiry continues today.