Inquiry hears of Official IRA gunman

Thirteen civilians were killed on Bloody Sunday

A witness has told the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Londonderry that he saw an Official IRA man with a gun in the Bogside when the shooting had ended.

The inquiry is investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting dead of 13 civilians taking part in a civil rights march in Derry in January 1972.

A fourteenth person died later from his wounds.

Giving evidence on Thursday, Bernard Doherty said the Official IRA man got out of a car at Westland Street and that he told them "it was a bit late to take revenge".

Mr Doherty said the gunman, and other people in the car, walked towards a block of flats but that he did not hear any more gunfire.

Another witness said he was in the Rossville flats area when someone shouted that he could see an Official IRA man with a handgun.

Gunman sighted

He said he looked at the crowd but did not see anyone with a gun.

Mr Doherty, who was a 16-year-old painter at the time, said a man with a handgun was sighted in the car park of Rossville Flats in the moments after the wounding of Peggy Deery, one of the earliest casualties.

She survived her injuries.

Mr Doherty said: "I immediately started looking into the crowd in the middle of the car park, particularly at people's hands, but I couldn't see anyone carrying a gun.

Mr Doherty also contradicted the claims of other witnesses, including the Bishop Daly, that the first person shot dead, Jack Duddy, was fleeing the advancing paratroopers when hit.

"At the time he was shot Jackie Duddy was standing shouting at the soldiers, he was not running away," he said.

'Hysterical' challange

"He definitely did not have anything in his hands. I know this because I had been looking intently at everyone's hands in the car park to look for the gunman that the boy standing next to me had spotted."

Within the next minute Michael Bridge was shot in the leg after hysterically confronting troops and challenging them to shoot him - again empty-handed, he claimed.

However, questioned by Kevin Finnegan QC, acting for most of the bereaved families, Mr Doherty admitted there may have been a gap between his sighting of Mr Duddy and the moment he was shot.

He also conceded he may have confused elements of the shootings of Mr Duddy and Mr Bridge and the sequence of events.

Harassment claim

Mr Doherty also admitted regular involvement in rioting in Derry and said that it was known for the IRA to use riots to shoot at soldiers but maintained that he only heard of such episodes after Bloody Sunday.

Asked by Lord Gifford QC why he rioted, he said: "My parents never brought me up to behave like that.

"We were harassed on a daily basis. When I used to go to work in the morning they (soldiers) used to pelt us with battery cells, they used to search us and frisk us and when they searched us they used to hit us up between the legs.

"The only way you thought you could get your own back was to go out and stone them.

"You can be pushed so far. We were pushed that far that you went out and started stoning and after a while it became enjoyable, although it was dangerous, but you got a kick out of it."