Bloody Sunday Inquiry 'proves victims unarmed'

A six-year inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings has finally proved none of those killed were armed, it was claimed today.

A top barrister representing relatives of the dead also launched a scathing attack on the reliability of evidence given to Lord Saville’s tribunal by soldiers who opened fire on Derry in January 1972, killing 13.

As the sprawling hearing began a new session at the city’s Guildhall, Arthur Harvey QC insisted the families had been certain for 30 years that their loved ones were targeted deliberately.

He said: “Those questions can only be answered by those who shot them, by those who were responsible for commanding those that shot them, and those who were responsible for designing the plan and implementing it during the course in which they were shot.”

But Mr Harvey argued the alleged resistance from British paratroopers who opened fire on civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday would stop the real facts from emerging.

He claimed the original, controversial Widgery inquiry into the killings had now been overturned.

“The truth has come out to a substantial degree,” the lawyer said.

“Not with a degree of certainty that many of the families would have wished. But one certainty has been established.

“Lord Widgery held that there was strong suspicion that a number of persons at the barricade were either armed or close to armed people.

“That evidence is now based on discredited forensic information.

“That alone makes this inquiry worthwhile, because it lifts the shadow for those families of accusations that still exists in certain sections of this community that these innocent victims brought about their own deaths.”