A witness who claimed he was narrowly missed by a shot fired from the walls of Derry in 1972 was accused yesterday of exaggerating details in his evidence to put the soldiers' action in the worst possible light.
Mr Daniel McGuinness, an engineer, had described two bullets passing overhead as he stood with a crowd at Free Derry Corner waiting for a public meeting to begin on Bloody Sunday. He said one bullet passed about five feet directly above his head from the direction of the city walls and he thought it could have been an attempt to kill him.
Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of British soldiers, suggested to the witness that he had "put a gloss" on his recollection "in order to exaggerate the wickedness of what you saw".
The witness said he did not think he had done so.
Mr Gerard Elias QC, representing another group of soldiers, said evidence would be presented that two shots were fired from a part of the city walls farther south at about 4.17 p.m., and he asked the witness if the shots he noted could have come from that direction. Mr McGuinness said he did not see that as a possibility.
Mr Elias said the evidence would be that two shots were fired from 21 Long Tower Street, and there was no evidence "that we are aware of" that shots were fired from the point this witness was identifying.
Mr McGuinness also described attending the anti-internment protest march at Magilligan beach on the weekend before Bloody Sunday, when he saw paratroopers beating civilians with batons and shooting rubber bullets into the crowd.
After one paratrooper fired a rubber bullet gun inches away from the midriff of a youth, but narrowly missed, he saw the soldier's superior, who also witnessed this, beat the soldier repeatedly with his baton. The witness said if the discharge from the soldier's gun had struck the boy at such close range, he believed it would have killed him.