Bloody Sunday judge hits out at inquiry hold-up

Lord Saville today slammed late moves to introduce new photographic evidence after the Bloody Sunday Inquiry was held up for an hour.

Kevin O’Callaghan, a senior forensic scientist, was due to begin giving evidence to day 230 of the inquiry in Derry’s Guildhall at 9.30am.

However, the proceedings were delayed while photographs were taken of the jacket worn by Jim Wray on January 30, 1972, the day on which he was one of 13 civilian civil rights marchers shot dead by soldiers in Derry.

Richard Harvey, counsel for the Wray family, said new photographs had to be taken after the circumstances of Mr Wray’s death were last week raised by Peter Clarke QC, counsel for the military witnesses.

The pictures were then taken this morning with Mr O’Callaghan in attendance in order to ensure they were accurate and helpful to the inquiry, he added.

“The intention was to orientate the jacket so that the holes in it could be lined up in a way in which it is believed the bullets went through the jacket,” Mr Harvey said.

Lord Saville said the delay was not the first occasion that the inquiry’s time had been taken up in “making preparation, photographing documents, in this case photographing a jacket and so on”.

He also questioned why the preparations could not have been made earlier.

“I would therefore appeal to all concerned to not treat the hearing hours as hours in which evidence can be prepared or other steps of a like nature taken,” he added.

Mr O’Callaghan, a ballistics expert, considered the original forensics tests carried out on the bodies in the wake of the shootings before taking the stand.

The co-author of his report on the Pathology and Ballistic Evidence Following the Bloody Sunday Shootings, Dr Richard Shepherd, a pathologist, spent several hours giving testimony to the inquiry detailing complex technical information yesterday.