Official IRA man 'on committee which organised march'

An Official IRA quartermaster was on the committee of the Derry Civil Rights Association which organised the march on Bloody Sunday, it was claimed today.

Witness Mavis Hyde, who was an activist in the Association branch, told the Saville Inquiry she was unaware of the paramilitary credentials of Reg Tester, whom she claimed did not attend many of the meetings, possibly because he worked shifts.

She also alleged another committee member was a man who is seeking anonymity at the hearings a measure currently being pursued by several witnesses, among them five other Official IRA men.

The same man, whose name had been blanked out of her statement, was later described getting on to the platform at the end of the march with the then Mid Ulster MP Bernadette Devlin and Civil Rights Association officer Kevin McCorry.

Asked by Edwin Glasgow QC, acting for most of the soldiers, if the man had ever advised the committee or expressed a view about whether there should be paramilitary activity on the day of the march, Ms Hyde replied: ‘‘No, because he would not have known that, I would not have thought.’’

Later she was asked by Counsel to the Inquiry Bilal Rawat about Mr Tester, who has admitted being ‘‘Command Staff Quartermaster for the Official Irish Republican Army’’ the forerunner to the now-dominant Provisional IRA.

He asked: ‘‘You were not aware of what Mr Tester’s affiliations were?’’

She replied: ‘‘I was not, no.’’

Earlier she told the inquiry: ‘‘He was working, as far as I recall, and so he was not very often at the meetings.

‘‘I think he worked shifts, I am not very sure about that, but anyway he was not at the meetings and so, therefore, his helping would have been putting up posters and things like that but it certainly would not have been actually taking part in the discussions.’’