Bloody Sunday paras blamed for other attacks

British paratroopers who killed 13 unarmed civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday probably also beat up and left for dead two innocent Catholic men a couple of days later, the Saville Inquiry was told today.

Families of those killed on the Derry march on January 30, 1972 were today hoping that the Saville Inquiry would be able to explore the widespread mentality of violence infecting the paratroopers at the time.

Seamus Treacy QC, counsel for many of the bereaved families, wanted paratrooper 027, who was on duty on Bloody Sunday and has said the killings were unjustified, to answer questions about other beatings and killings in which the paras were suspects.

Both attacks occurred in Belfast in 1972 where the paras were based.

Catholics Raymond Muldoon and Francis Creagh were kidnapped, beaten and then left for dead on the Shankill Road in February.

Mr Treacy said: “Mr Muldoon and Mr Creagh were ill-treated by members of the anti-tank platoon. They were abducted and were then dumped on the Shankill Road.

“They were dumped outside a loyalist bar and when they were dumped outside the loyalist bar they were identified by the soldiers as Catholics, thereby making them targets for loyalist paramilitaries.”

Soldier 027 said he could not remember if any of the paras had been questioned by police over the incident.

Inquiry chairman Lord Saville rejected a call for Soldier 027 to be questioned about the paras’ alleged involvement in the controversial killing of two protestants in the Shankill Road in September 1972.

Lord Saville blocked the request saying he was “extremely dubious” of its relevance. The incident happened more than seven months after Bloody Sunday and would need “an inquiry within an inquiry” to investigate properly, he said.

Lord Saville said: “The Divis Flats example is a day or two after Bloody Sunday involving, on the face of it, the same personnel who were involved in Bloody Sunday and it seems to us that is the right side of the line.”