Paras 'trained terrorists'

PARATROOPERS who shot and killed 13 unarmed civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday were "savage, trained terrorists" who took pride and pleasure in "legalised murder", a former British major claimed yesterday.

Soldiers from the Parachute Regiment who carried out the "appalling slaughter" on the streets of Derry on January 30, 1972, also brutally mistreated their prisoners, it was alleged.

The claims were made by a former major in the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards at the central London inquiry into the deaths. The officer, known only as INQ 179, recorded in his diary on the day that he was horrified by the Paras' actions, adding: "Words cannot describe what a dreadful and ghastly regiment that is."