Bloody Sunday soldier 'fired at two gunmen'

A soldier said today that he shot two gunmen on Bloody Sunday.

The soldier, known only as Soldier C, told the Saville Inquiry in London that he thought he had hit his targets.

The soldier, who was a private in Support Company, 1 Para, said in a written statement that he had reached the top of a flight of steps to the balcony of a small block of flats in Derry on January 30, 1972, when he heard the sound of automatic gunfire.

“This was not a riot but close-quarters warfare and very dangerous,” he said.

He stopped at the top of a sloping ramp and saw the “dark shadow of a person in a long coat” appear either from behind a corner of a building or from behind a door.

“The person seemed to be holding what I thought was a Kalashnikov rifle,” he said.

“I cannot now actually recall seeing the weapon being fired but I definitely can visualise the person holding the weapon and lifting the gun slowly.

“I cannot now recall firing my weapon and if so, whether I hit the gunman... if I did fire, it is because the man must have fired his weapon.”

But questioned about the gunman by Alan Roxburgh, counsel to the inquiry, he said: “When they disappear you think you have hit them, you hope you have taken them away from being a danger.”

Soldier C also fired three shots at a gunman or woman firing from a window, he said.

He agreed with Mr Roxburgh that he had stated in 1972 that he had hit him in the chest or arm, which meant he thought he had either wounded or killed him.

Mr Roxburgh asked Soldier C about evidence he gave to the Widgery Tribunal into Bloody Sunday in 1972 that he was lying on the ramp when he fired at the first gunman.

It was suggested in cross-examination at Widgery that he could not have seen the gunman if lying down because of a low wall.

He said today: “Now I am not saying... whether I would be kneeling, standing or lying, but I definitely fired the two rounds, you know.”

And in his statement he said: “I probably lay down during the sound of incoming fire and then rose to a standing position when I was ready to shoot back.

“To get from a lying to standing position, I had to kneel. He (a lawyer at the Widgery Tribunal) was trying to make out that my evidence was unreliable and that I was a liar.

“It is only now that I realise what he was trying to do.”

Soldier C confirmed that in November 1996 he was convicted in the Crown Court on a charge of obtaining property by deception, to which he pleaded guilty.

The property he was convicted of obtaining by deception was £12,000 (€17,250), and the nature of the deception was a building job which was said to be overpriced, he said.

He agreed he was sentenced to three years imprisonment and served 18 months.

Asked by Mr Roxburgh if he had told the truth in the evidence he had given to the tribunal about the events of Bloody Sunday, he said: “Everything to my memory and the best of my knowledge and truthfulness, everything that there is.”

The tribunal is investigating the events of January 30, 1972 when 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead in Derry. A 14th man died later.