Saville Inquiry rules on paramilitary membership

The Bloody Sunday tribunal today ruled that intelligence material directly relating to the activities of civilian witnesses on the day of the shootings should be admitted to the inquiry.

But Lord Justice Saville’s team turned down an application from Ministry of Defence lawyers that all material held by Government intelligence agencies on witnesses’ possible paramilitary activities which were unconnected with Bloody Sunday, should be made available to the investigation.

In essence, this means that if there is intelligence material that a civilian witness was in the IRA on Bloody Sunday, the team should be told.

However, if a witness joined the Provisionals after the event, this is irrelevant for the purposes of the inquiry.

Lawyers representing some of the 1,200 civilian witnesses who are giving evidence to the tribunal in the Derry Guildhall into the 1972 killing of 14 civilians wanted no such evidence admitted.

Lord Saville and his two tribunal colleagues ruled that only ‘‘directly relevant material’’ would be sought from the intelligence agencies.

The tribunal said it wanted access to ‘‘material that would add to the inquiry’s knowledge and understanding of the events of Bloody Sunday’’.

‘‘In other words information that throws any light either on the plans made by any paramilitary organisation for Bloody Sunday or on the actual events of the day.’’

It ruled that to seek other material which would identify other people who were not presently witnesses before the inquiry would be a ‘‘virtually impossible task’’ that would take ‘‘literally years’’ to carry out.

‘‘It seems to us that in order to keep the matter within the limits of practicability, we should ask the agencies, at least in the first instance, to confine their search to the material in the files of those individuals identified to them by the inquiry, namely those individuals from or in respect of whom the inquiry has or expects to have some evidence about Bloody Sunday.’’

The ruling was made after a row broke out raising the prospect of some witnesses refusing to give evidence.