Repression claims as inquiry resumes

Fourteen people were killed as a result of Bloody Sunday shootings

A lawyer for the Bloody Sunday tribunal has claimed British soldiers used repressive and unjustifiable violence against civilians in Northern Ireland.

The inquiry is examining the events of 30 January 1972 when British soldiers opened fire on a civil rights march in Londonderry.

Thirteen people were killed on the day and a fourteenth man died later from gunshot injuries.

The hearings, which are chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, went into recess in June. The scheduled resumption in September was delayed by the surprise resignation of one of the judges, Sir Edward Somer.

John Toohey: New member of the inquiry

His replacement, retired Australian judge Mr John Toohey, made his first public appearance on Monday alongside Lord Saville and the third inquiry member, ex-Canadian judge, Mr William Hoyt.

Counsel to the inquiry, Christopher Clarke QC, presented fresh allegations as he made his first statement at the resumed hearings in Derry.

The allegations were made by an ex-paratrooper, known as 027, as part of his evidence to the inquiry.

He said two soldiers who had said they had fired shots on Bloody Sunday had been involved in an incident in which a civilian was electrocuted and castrated before his body was dumped in a loyalist area.

He was knocked out, revived, and thrown into the back of the pig where he was electrocuted...,castrated, sliced in the face with a knife and generally kicked and beaten

Christopher Clarke QC

He said an account of the operation in the Divis Flats area of west Belfast had described how two soldiers, known as G and F, had run a man, bent double between them, into the plating of an armoured vehicle (known as a pig).

Mr Clarke said: "He was knocked out but then revived, and was thrown into the back of the pig where he was electrocuted in some way, castrated, sliced in the face with a knife and generally kicked and beaten.

"The statement then goes on to assert that his body was taken to the Shankill and dumped to await his fate."

The tribunal also heard a tape recording of a conversation claimed to be between two security force members and taped secretly by the IRA.

In the recording, which went missing shortly after coming to light in 1974 and resurfaced this summer, the two soldiers are heard saying "things have gone badly" and referring to "the wrong people" being shot.

However, the recording played at the Guildhall venue for the hearings is not the original which was seized by Irish police in 1976.

Mr Clarke said repeated attempts had been made by solicitors representing the relatives and by the Inquiry itself to discover the whereabouts of the original recording from the Irish Government.

"It is obviously desirable for the tape, if it is still in possession of the Irish authorities, to be produced since the tape the Inquiry has now is not the original and may well not be a copy of the whole of the original tape."