Evidence before the Saville Inquiry suggests soldiers who testified at the original hearing into Bloody Sunday 28 years ago may not have been telling the whole truth, it was alleged today. Counsel to the Inquiry Christopher Clarke made the claim as he spoke of two of the dead, Gerald Donaghey and Gerald McKinney, being shot at Abbey Park, a block of houses neighbouring the Glenfada Park complex where until now the victims were recorded as having been hit.
None of the soldiers who gave evidence to Lord Widgery in 1972 admitted firing into Abbey Park - with one possible exception, said Mr Clarke. On that evidence, if that be correct, whatever else Lord Widgery was told, it was not the whole truth, he added. Mr Clarke disclosed that photographs before the current inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, cast very considerable light on the issue of exactly where four of the dead were wounded.
Mr Clarke said that Lord Widgery regarded the evidence before him as too confused and contradictory to make separate consideration of the circumstances relating to the four who died possible, in particular whether they died in Glenfada Park or Abbey Park. Lord Saville was hampered by the absence, or so he supposed, of any photographs to clear up the discrepancies, he added. The current inquiry had relevant pictures, some of which were in fact before Lord Widgery, which cast very considerable light on the places where relevant individuals died, Mr Clarke told the tribunal.
A combination of the photographs and some civilian evidence strongly suggested that Mr Friel, Mr Gillespie, Mr Mahon, Mr O'Donnell and Mr Quinn were all wounded in Glenfada Park and that William McKinney and James Wray were killed there. Evidence also suggested that Mr Donaghey and Gerald McKinney were killed in Abbey Park.
