Victim challenges Bloody Sunday soldier

One of the men wounded on Bloody Sunday today challenged the soldier responsible to meet him face-to-face and tell the truth …

One of the men wounded on Bloody Sunday today challenged the soldier responsible to meet him face-to-face and tell the truth about what he did.

Mr Michael Bradley survived the gunfire in Derry’s Bogside but suffered wounds to both his forearms and his chest when shot in the car park of the Rossville Flats.

He told the Saville inquiry he was shot as he angrily shouted at soldiers in the moments after Jack Duddy (17) was shot dead in the same area.

"I would love to meet the soldier who shot me face-to-face," Mr Bradley said.

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"I would be angry and I would ask him how he had slept for 26 years - I know how I have.

"I was innocent. I did not have a nail bomb or anything but I was shot. I know even with this new inquiry that we will not get the justice we would like but I would like the soldier to tell the truth.

"I don't want him hung, drawn and quartered - just to tell the truth."

Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, acting for most of the soldiers, later said: "I have not suggested and will not suggest that you were armed with a nail bomb or with any lethal weapon."

Mr Bradley said he was unable to recall whether he may have picked up a stone to throw in the moments before he was shot, admitting: "I just went berserk."

Mr Bradley said he was clearly unarmed when confronting the troops.

"The next thing I remember is feeling a heavy thud on my right upper arm. I threw my left arm over my right arm," he said.

"My first reaction was that I had been hit by a rubber bullet and I remember saying ‘I'm hit, I'm hit’.

"A young man close to me said I wasn't hit but that I'd been shot. I then saw the blood. It was streaming down my arm."

He then made his way to the Rossville flats and was brought to hospital.

PA