A witness who was arrested by soldiers on Bloody Sunday said yesterday he would always remember hearing one of them boast to another that he had shot someone in the head and that "he bled like a pig".
Mr Hugh O'Boyle said he had crouched with other terrified civilians behind a car in the enclosed courtyard of Glenfada Park North, in the Bogside, as paratroopers advanced.
He had just seen three bodies crumpled about 20 to 30 yards away and he said: " . . . time seemed to stand still; I knew I was in serious trouble and that I might be about to die shortly . . . I started to pray. All of us were whispering to ourselves and to each other: `We're finished. We're finished.' "
Mr O'Boyle said a soldier came into the courtyard and shouted: "Up. Hands above your head." He walked towards the soldier, who was aiming a rifle. "At that stage I believed I was going to be shot," he said.
The witness said he was marched with others out of the courtyard through an alley, and as they came on to Rossville street they saw cameramen and reporters. "As soon as I saw the cameramen, I knew I was safe because I was on film," he said. They were lined up at a wall, he said. A soldier put the muzzle of a rubber bullet gun into the mouth of a man and said: `You Fenian bastards. We're going to get you tonight.' "
They were driven to Fort George army base. A soldier kicked him out of the truck and another struck him on his knee with a baseball bat or pickaxe handle. The injury gave him problems for years afterwards.
He said he had to run a gauntlet of soldiers, who were hitting him as they rushed him through a hole in a fence and into a building, where he and others were lined up and told to hold a coil of barbed wire. "Every so often the soldiers would hit the wire, causing it to vibrate and hurt our hands," he said.
He was photographed and told that he would be charged with riotous behaviour. At some stage before he was released at about 1 a.m., he was near two soldiers in full battle dress. He said he remembered their laughter as one boasted to another: `I got him. I shot him in the head. He bled like a pig.' "
Mr John Coyle, for the family of Mr Bernard McGuigan, said the inquiry had photographic evidence that Mr McGuigan was shot in the head and lost a considerable amount of blood.
Mr Brian Rainey, who was a PE teacher in Derry at the time, told of watching Saracen armoured cars and soldiers on foot entering the Bogside.
He said a group of youngsters at the rubble barricade on Rossville Street were shouting and throwing stones. He heard shots and saw three or four of them fall. "I could not believe my eyes," he said. "I had never seen anyone shot before."
Mrs Celine Dunleavy said that as she looked on to Rossville Street from her first-floor flat she saw the prone figures of three men on the barricade. An elderly man crouching there was shouting towards the soldiers: "Come up and see what you've done to my son." This man raised a hand, a shot rang out and his hand fell.
A few moments later she saw three men walking across Glenfada Park North, which was on the other side of the street. More shots were fired and she then saw that the men were prone on the ground. "My first thought was that (they) had chosen an odd place to take cover from the firing." But as she watched, there was another shot and the body of one man seemed to rock. "It was then that I realised, to my horror, that they had been shot."
The inquiry continues today.