Soldiers threw bodies like pieces of meat, claims witness

An horrific account of soldiers dumping blooded bodies, some still moving, into the back of an Army vehicle after the shooting on Bloody Sunday was given to the Saville Inquiry in Derry today.

Kathleen Hutton, who was 16 on the day Paratroopers shot dead 13 people on the civil rights march, watched is a state of hysterics from the window of a friend’s flat overlooking the rubble barricade at Rossville Street.

Mrs Hutton said she watched from an aunt’s flat where she had taken shelter as soldiers picked bodies off the barricade and ‘‘dumped them into the Saracen like lumps of meat going to the abattoir’’.

‘‘They threw them into the Saracen lying face-to-face.’’

She said she was hysterical at that stage because she knew the bodies in the Saracen could still be alive.

‘‘I could see them moving and I was terrified they were going to drown in their own blood.’’

Mrs Hutton said in her statement to the inquiry that she opened the window of the flat and shouted at the soldiers: ‘‘They’ll drown in their own blood’’.

A soldier who had been guarding the Army vehicle turned and shot up at the windows and she ducked back in. The shots missed the window and Mrs Hutton said: ‘‘I got the feeling the soldiers were just firing in our direction to shut us up.’’

Later she returned to her home passing soldiers on the way. ‘‘They looked fairly happy and pleased with themselves as if they had done a job well.

‘‘They were bragging that they had ‘got at least nine of yous’ and things like that.’’

Mrs Hutton broke down in tears while recounting seeing one of the victims, Jackie Duddy, being carried away after being shot.

The inquiry had to adjourn for several minutes to allow her to compose herself. When she re-took the stand she said: ‘‘I have spent 30 years trying to forget it and it all came back.’’

She added: ‘‘I have blocked out the whole thing out about Jackie Duddy’s death until I had to remember it.’’

She said seeing him being carried away was an image that had never left her, and one which she had also seen often on television.

‘‘In fact, now I remember everything on that day almost in the third person.

‘‘It seems I have gone over it in my head so many times that it’s as if I am watching it on a TV screen in my head.’’