Former para lied in original Bloody Sunday deaths account

A FORMER paratrooper said yesterday he fabricated his original eyewitness account of the Bloody Sunday shootings that put soldiers in a positive light.

The radio operator in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment's anti-tank platoon was taken line-by-line through his statement to the Royal Military Police (RMP) given days after paratroopers killed 13 unarmed men on a Derry civil rights march on January 30, 1972.

Yesterday he rejected claims made in this account that he saw gunmen and petrol bombers: "I believe in the first statement which I made I used fabrication it was coming from me."