The forensic scientist who originally found that most of the 13 Bloody Sunday victims had either fired a gun, handled a gun or been beside a gunman when they were killed in Derry's Bogside 30 years ago yesterday questioned his original scientific findings.
Dr John Martin was a principal scientific officer with the Department of Industrial and Forensic Science at the time of the Bloody Sunday killings on January 30th, 1972. His findings of firearms residue on the bodies of most of the 13 victims led Lord Widgery to conclude at the original Bloody Sunday inquiry that seven of the victims had either handled a gun or been beside a gunman.
Yesterday, however, Dr Martin told the 226th day of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that when he prepared his original report 30 years ago he was under the impression that only 30 shots had been fired by paratroopers as they advanced into the Bogside.
"When I did the tests and prepared my report for Widgery, I was under the impression that 20 to 30 shots had been fired and that the bodies had been transferred in clean conditions to the mortuary.
"It was only at my cross-examination that I became aware that over 100 shots had been fired, greatly increasing both the overall levels of gunshot residues in the immediate environment and the possibility of fragmentation. In addition, at least some of the bodies had been handled and transported in a way that could have resulted in contamination by gunshot residue.
"This effectively means that unless there is evidence from other sources to indicate an association between any of the deceased and a weapon, then it would be unwise to interpret my findings as other than contamination."
Cross-examined by counsel to the inquiry, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, he agreed it was "probably fair enough" to say that at the time of his tests he was invited to produce evidence which supported the proposition that the victims had been associated with firearms.
He denied Mr Clarke's assertion that that amounted to "a corruption of the process" but agreed that in retrospect it was "extraordinary" to conclude that someone had fired a weapon based on the discovery of a dust-sized single microscopic particle. "They were extraordinary times and we were making extraordinary decisions."
He replied no when asked if he was "under any pressure from anybody to produce a report that favoured the conclusion that some of the victims had been associated with firearms use".
He said he had never been involved before in a case where 13 people had been shot dead on the same day, when 108 bullets had been fired and when some of the victims had been on the receiving end of substantial fire. "I think that is very likely that all the findings that I got on hands and clothing were due to contamination," he told the inquiry's three judges.