'Bomb killed RUC man who took my statement'

An RUC man who dealt with a complaint from a man arrested by troops on Bloody Sunday was himself murdered in a bomb attack almost a year later, the Saville Inquiry heard today.

Sgt David Dorsett, 37, had taken a statement from George Nelis, who was angered by his treatment at the hands of Paratroopers on January 30 1972, including one alleged to have promised to kill him.

But the Wolverhampton-born officer was killed on January 14 1973 along with a colleague when a bomb exploded under their car.

Mr Nelis told the inquiry probing the killing of 13 men on Bloody Sunday today that he returned to Victoria Barracks in Londonderry to see the sergeant after lodging his original complaint.

He said: "This detective was killed some time later by a car bomb and, after that happened, I decided there was no point in taking the matter any further. I was sick of all the violence."

Mr Nelis, who was 34 on Bloody Sunday, recalled attending the civil rights march in Derry’s Bogside which ended with the killings to take photographs.

He was in his mother and sisters’ house on Chamberlain Street where two of the injured - Peggy Deery and Michael Bridge - were treated and which was later raided by troops who rounded up the men present.

The group were marched up to waste ground on William Street and ordered to crouch down in a semi-circle while waiting for a truck to bring them to Fort George Army barracks in the city, said Mr Nelis.

One of the soldiers, identified at the hearings only as Inq 12, was alleged to have approached Mr Nelis from behind and told him that he had been wounded in Belfast "but then got his revenge by killing four Irish men".

"He then said to me that he was going to kill me as well today and that I wouldn’t see my wife again.

"After what I had seen had happened to Mrs Deery and the young boy in the Rossville Flats courtyard, I completely believed what Inq 12 told me and was certain I was going to be killed imminently."