The director of a Channel Four documentary, televised 10 years ago to mark the 20th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, said yesterday that he and other members of the documentary team concluded that the first shot fired in Derry on Bloody Sunday was fired by an IRA gunman.
Mr Tony Stark, an independent film-maker, said he wrote the script for the documentary following a series of research trips, which involved interviewing paratroopers who were on duty in Derry's Bogside when 13 civilians were shot dead. Mr Stark told the Bloody Sunday inquiry yesterday that the original premise of the documentary - that the production team would have access to paratroopers who would admit to "shooting civilians in cold blood" - could not be stood up.
"The premise shifted and the final broadcast version of the film presents a more balanced account of the events. We came to the conclusion that an IRA gunman probably had fired first after hearing one soldier fire warning shots to ward off a hostile crowd," he told the inquiry. "We also took the view that the conclusions of the Widgery Report were flawed as were the tribunal's forensic tests that had allegedly shown that two of the civilians shot that day had probably fired weapons during the demonstration," he added.
Mr Stark said together with the documentary's producer, Mr John Goddard, he interviewed nine soldiers who were on duty in Derry on Bloody Sunday. "The most valuable meeting was, I believe, with a group of about five soldiers whom we met and talked to in Belfast during a trip to Northern Ireland. We also met a further four soldiers individually elsewhere on the mainland," he said.
Mr Stark said he was also present during an interview with Mr Martin McGuinness which dealt with the Provisional IRA's actions on Bloody Sunday. A transcript of the audio-taped interview shown to the inquiry quoted Mr McGuinness, who has admitted being the Provisional IRA's second in command in Derry on Bloody Sunday, as saying: "I have always been of the opinion that this was a military operation as opposed to political sanction and that the reason it was done was to draw the IRA into a gunfight."
The inquiry continues.