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13 - 16 JANUARY 2003
Evidence heard
This week, the Tribunal heard from four military witnesses, namely:
Lieutenant Colonel James Ferguson, Colonel Peter Welsh, Captain Michael Rose and INQ2241.
Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister at the time of Bloody Sunday,
also began his evidence to the Inquiry. It
will be dealt with upon its completion.
A full transcript of the proceedings is available at http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk.
1. james ferguson’s evidence
Lieutenant Colonel (now Colonel) James Ferguson was the Commander of the 22 Light Air Defence Regiment (LADR), one of the resident battalions in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday. He was in charge of Barrier 12, manned by his regiment on the day itself, a barrier through which C Company of 1 Para entered the Bogside.
1.1 General Ford’s visit to Derry on 7th January 1972
Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson met with General Ford during the latter’s visit to Derry on 7th January after which he produced the now infamous memo suggesting the shooting of ringleaders of the Derry Young Hooligans as a method for regaining control of the situation in the city. Although it was Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson’s evidence that the General had not shared this opinion with him, he did recall being asked, by letter, sometime in January 1972, to consider the use of various “less lethal” weapons in dealing with riot situations, including the adaptation of the Army-issue SLR (self-loading rifle) to fire smaller ammunition (a further proposal outlined in the Ford memo). He said that he had discussed the proposal with his battery commanders but had come to the conclusion that the introduction of such a weapon would not be satisfactory.
1.2 Army plan for Bloody Sunday
Although Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson had been tasked with drawing up a draft plan to deal with the NICRA march originally planned for the weekend preceding Bloody Sunday, he was not consulted in the planning for the weekend of 30th January, a fact he described as unusual, but understandable. It was his recollection that his plan envisaged stopping the march and arresting ringleaders of the marchers, rather than hooligans.
He was first informed of the plans for the Bloody Sunday march at the co-ordinating conference / orders group held on 28th January. It was his evidence that, during the course of this meeting, he inquired as to whether the rules of engagement (the Yellow Card) would be modified on the day to make them more restrictive. His question was based on his belief that there was a possibility that ‘freelancers’ from either the republican or loyalist divide might use the march to “take pot-shots” at soldiers and that, in such a built-up area as Derry, it would be nigh-on impossible for the soldiers to know who was shooting and from what location, leading to the danger of soldiers firing at one another (he explained that he did not expect the IRA to be involved at all as it would have been against their interests to take away from the legitimacy of the civil rights organisation; rather he envisaged that the snipers would be lone individuals, acting of their own accord). The response to his question was negative and it was his impression that his concerns relating to the possibility of soldiers shooting at one another were not shared by those present.
He told the Tribunal that Colonel Welsh, the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Green Jackets had attempted to dissuade Brigadier MacLellan from using 1 Para on Bloody Sunday, having been concerned about their use of unjustified force at the Magilligan march, held on the weekend preceding Bloody Sunday.
1.3 Gunfire hear
1.3.1 Automatic fire (IRA fire)
Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson told the Inquiry that the first gunfire he heard on Bloody Sunday was a burst of automatic fire from a Thompson sub-machine gun (TSMG), fired some time after 1 Para had entered the Bogside. At the time he was at the junction of William Street and Strand Road with General Ford who remarked that it was very heavy firing.
He was asked a number of questions pertaining to this recollection. Firstly, he was asked to explain why it does not appear in his statement to the Widgery Inquiry. It was his evidence that he wrote an initial statement for the Widgery Inquiry which contained some statistical errors concerning the shooting incidents on the day. These having been pointed out to him by an officer of the Special Branch of the Royal Military Police (RMP), he corrected the errors and forwarded a second statement to the RMP. This was in turn typed up, reviewed and sent back to him for a signature. His explanation for the absence of the information relating to automatic fire was that it must have been omitted from his second statement by somebody other than himself—an omission he had not come to uncover until giving his evidence to the current Inquiry. He agreed that it would have been extraordinary for the RMP to have left out of his statement one of the most important parts of his evidence and for him not to have noticed. Furthermore, neither of the copies of his statement that would have included this information have surfaced before the Inquiry and there is no other historical record indicating that he heard automatic firing prior to his inclusion of this information in his statement to the current Inquiry. However, the Lieutenant Colonel was adamant that his recollection was not faulty and that he had heard automatic fire on the day.
Secondly, it was pointed out to him that it is General Ford’s evidence that he made the remark about “heavy firing” in relation to the sound of 15 to 20 single shots rather than automatic fire and that he did not hear automatic fire at any stage during the course of the afternoon. Again, despite this and despite the fact that he had no recollection of having discussed hearing automatic fire with the General, he was sure that his memory on this topic was not at fault.
1.3.2 SLR fire (Army fire)
Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson said that he did not hear the 15 to 20 single shots heard by General Ford, nor did he hear any of the 100-plus rounds of high-velocity ammunition fired by the Paras in the Bogside that afternoon. It was his belief that the surrounding buildings would have masked the noise of this fire.
1.4 Events witnessed
After hearing the gunfire, Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson went to the observation post on top of the Embassy Ballroom from where he had a panoramic view of the Bogside. It was his evidence that all of the firing had ceased by the time he arrived on the roof, which was approximately 4:19pm. However, Major Loden’s report of the day’s events, which was put out for public consumption and incorporated into statements by Ministry of Defence officials, records that what he terms the ‘gun battle’ took place from 4:16 to 4:35pm, at precisely the time Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson was on the roof. The Lieutenant Colonel suggested that Major Loden might have been mistaken in relation to the timings.
2. peter welsh’s evidence
Colonel (now Major General) Welsh was the Commanding Officer of the Royal Green Jackets (RGJ), the other resident battalion in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday. The RGJ played only a minor role on Bloody Sunday, with only one company in the city, under the command of 22 Light Air Defence Regiment at Barrier 14. The other three companies were on reserve at Magilligan and conducting usual duties in the county. He spent the afternoon of Bloody Sunday in a helicopter flying over the Bogside with the purported specific mission of identifying separation between marchers and rioters. His evidence centred primarily on this role and on what he witnessed on the day.
2.1 Magilligan civil rights march
Colonel Welsh recalled seeing unnecessary violence meted out to civil rights protestors at Magilligan by soldiers from 1 Para under his command on the day, and that his adjutant and two others had attempted to physically restrain the Paras in question. However, he did not make any complaint about their behaviour after the event and could not explain his lack of action. Nor could he recall calling Lieutenant Colonel David Ramsbotham, who was at that time the military assistant to the Chief of the General Staff, General Carver, to raise his concerns about the matter, as alleged by the Lieutenant Colonel (c.f. Week 70, paragraph 5.3).
2.2 Use of 1 Para on Bloody Sunday
Colonel Welsh told the Inquiry that he had been disappointed initially that his battalion was not allocated a role on Bloody Sunday, as it was the city battalion and the soldiers knew the area well. It was his belief that 1 Para might have been brought in to deal with the hooligans in a tougher fashion than was usual in Derry, but did not recall anyone telling him that this was the case. He said that he called Brigadier MacLellan to request a more active role for the RGJ and to inform the Brigadier of his opinion that it would be unwise to use the Paras on the day, given their reputation for ‘toughness’ and their behaviour at Magilligan the previous week. However, the Brigadier had responded that he “had [his] orders”.
2.3 Role on Bloody Sunday
Although it was the Colonel’s evidence on 1st March 1972 that he had requested to go in the helicopter on the day of the march, receiving a mere ‘informal briefing’ minutes before he went up, he told the Inquiry that he might well have been allocated this role at the co-ordinating conference held on 28th January, as suggested by Brigadier MacLellan. His role was, he said, to observe happenings on the ground from the air, including appraising Brigade HQ of the exact route of the march and ascertaining when and whether separation between marchers and rioters occurred, although he acknowledged that the latter might have been better observed by those on the Embassy Ballroom.
Colonel Welsh did not recall being told that the arrest operation would not be mounted in the absence of separation between the marchers and the hooligans, nor being told that his role was fundamental to the Army operation. It was his initial evidence that separation was always vital when conducting any arrest operation, but he later acknowledged that separation was not necessary in regular ‘snatch’ arrest operations and that the concept of separation had probably never been developed or employed in Derry prior to Bloody Sunday.
He told the Inquiry that he was unaware on the day as to 1 Para’s plan for an arrest operation, including where any such operation would take place, but did not think that this would have prevented him from providing helpful advice concerning the status of separation. It was his belief that he was to identify gaps between marchers and hooligans, enabling the arrest operation to be launched in the location identified, which he had presumed would be somewhere between Aggro Corner and the Rossville Flats.
2.4 Identifying separation
As evidenced in the log of Army communications on Bloody Sunday, at no stage throughout the course of the day did Colonel Welsh make any mention of separation or of the fact that it occurred. He was asked how he had come to tell Lord Widgery not only that he had identified a gap between Rossville Flats and Aggro Corner, but also that he had reported this to Brigade HQ, whereas in fact he made no such report. He responded that he must have mistakenly believed that he had communicated this fact to Brigade HQ, but had no clear recollection of having witnessed this happening.
The last few messages from him to Brigade HQ prior to the Paras’ entry into the Bogside record that the crowd stretched from Aggro Corner, beyond the Rossville Flats into the Lecky Road and that the rioters at the barriers had been driven into the marchers by the use of CS gas and the appearance of Army vehicles at the barriers. He agreed that if Brigade HQ was relying entirely on his information to determine separation, it would have involved a high level of interpretation for Brigadier MacLellan to have understood from his information that sufficient separation had occurred between rioters at Aggro Corner and those participating in the march.
He also agreed that he had had difficulties witnessing events on the ground due to the limited view available from a helicopter and that, if the primary purpose of his being in the air was to assist Brigade in making a determination on the status of separation, he had been singularly ill-used.
2.5 Paras’ entry into the Bogside
Colonel Welsh told the Tribunal that he had not seen the Paras’ entry into the Bogside and had been surprised upon seeing the Army vehicles parked up in the area, not having heard over the radio that they were due to go in. It was his evidence that throughout the course of the subsequent events, he had not seen any soldiers debussing from their vehicles and had not seen any indication (such as smoke or flashes) that rubber bullets or live rounds had been fired by soldiers on the ground and only found out what had transpired on the day upon his return to barracks later that evening.
2.6 Discussion concerning the day’s events
The Colonel said that he could not recall any discussion about the day’s events between him and the other commanding officers (Roy Jackson and James Ferguson) either before or after the Widgery Inquiry, stating that there was nothing to be gained from such discussions. Everyone was, he said, aghast at the results of the operation but the general feeling was one of relief that their regiments had not been involved. However, he acknowledged that he had perhaps expressed to his company commanders the sentiment that, had the Royal Green Jackets been involved, they would have demonstrated greater restraint.
3. Michael rose’s evidence
On Bloody Sunday, Captain (now General Sir) Michael Rose was a Public Relations Officer with the Coldstream Guards, stationed near St Eugene’s Cathedral . He told the Inquiry that his role on Bloody Sunday was to monitor the crowd as it passed the barrier manned by the Coldstream Guards. Although he served in the SAS during his Army career, he refused to say when he was selected for the SAS, stating only that he was not connected to the SAS in 1972.
3.1 Information received prior to Bloody Sunday regarding the march
Captain Rose said that, given his role as PR officer on Bloody Sunday, he would have had to know in advance the general parameters of the Army’s plan for the day in order to be able to answer questions posed by the media on the day. However, it was his evidence that he had never been informed that an arrest operation was planned for the day, explaining that such information would not have been imparted to such a junior officer as he was at the time.
It was his evidence that it was a typical IRA tactic at the time to use crowds as cover to attack soldiers and that at the Battalion briefing held prior to Bloody Sunday, he and his fellow soldiers had been told that the IRA was going to attempt to turn the march into a “bloodbath” in front of the world media present on the day. When informed that the IRA had never opened fire during the course of a march throughout the entire period of the ban on marches to date, he responded that he was not aware of that fact at the time but knew that “on this occasion they chose to open fire”.
3.2 Gunfire heard on the day
Throughout the course of the day Captain Rose heard none of the 100-plus shots fired by the Army. However, it was his evidence that he had heard two occasions of what he termed “terrorist gun-fire”. The first of these was a burst of five or six shots from a Thompson machine-gun which he claimed to have heard shortly after the end of the march passed the cathedral. He was adamant that the gunfire heard was not the five shots fired by soldiers at 3:50pm that afternoon at a suspect nail-bomber and that he had not heard the latter shots, fired a couple of hundred yards away from his location. Furthermore, although, according to Counsel for the families and wounded, other soldiers place the sound of Thompson fire later in the afternoon, after a considerable number of Army shots had been fired, Captain Rose remained adamant that this was the first fire he had heard on the day.
Although he had a notebook, he had not made a note of hearing the shots (indeed his statement to the current Inquiry is the first time he has committed his recollections of the day’s events to paper), believing that “enough notes were being taken and enough reports being written without [his] adding to the pile of paper”. When challenged on the fact that nobody else did in fact record the sound of a Thompson gun at the time he claims to have heard one fired, he said that he had told his Lance Sergeant, UNK235, to make a note of it. However, he had no knowledge of what had happened to the note and UNK235 is now dead.
The second sounds of fire he heard were single rifle shots, fired from a weapon other than an Army weapon as he reached the junction of Rossville Street and William Street some minutes later. Again, whilst he saw a soldier in the firing position, it was his evidence that he neither saw nor heard any Army fire at this time.
3.3 Events witnessed on the day
Having heard what he identified as the sound of a Thompson machine-gun, Captain Rose left the area under the command of the Coldstream Guards and ran down Great James Street to Barrier 12, accompanied by his Lance Sergeant UNK235. He said that by this stage the Paratroopers had already entered the Bogside and he saw two Army Pigs (armoured vehicles) ahead of him in Rossville Street. However, he did not see the lorries that went through the barrier after the Pigs, nor did he see any soldiers de-bus from the vehicles.
He acknowledged that he had had no authority to leave his area, but that he had been driven by curiosity, having heard the Thompson fire, and by the need to establish an overall picture of what was happening.
4. INQ2241’s evidence
INQ2241 was the Colonel of the General Staff Intelligence at Army Headquarters Northern Ireland (HQNI), the most senior-ranking intelligence officer in Northern Ireland at the time of Bloody Sunday. As such, his evidence centred on the intelligence available to the Army prior to Bloody Sunday concerning any IRA activity planned for the day.
It was his evidence that the intelligence community was expecting the IRA to use the march as an opportunity to snipe at the Army, but that there was no suggestion of their planning any major action on the day. This expectation was based primarily on what he termed standard operational practice of the IRA and on the ‘David memo’, received from London in the days preceding Bloody Sunday, which included a confirmation from “a reliable source” that the IRA was indeed planning an attack. This memo is the only documented evidence of intelligence to that effect, a paucity which INQ2241 explained by stating that the further intelligence he had received from low-grade sources to corroborate this intelligence had possibly not been recorded but merely passed on by word of mouth.
4.1 Standard IRA operating procedures
Having stated that it was the usual practice of the IRA to use crowds as cover to snipe at the Army, INQ2241 was asked whether he could in fact recall any occasion on which the IRA had used a march as cover. Counsel for the families and wounded suggested to him that, in fact, there was no single occasion throughout the period of the ban on marches (imposed in August 1971) of the IRA using guns during the course of a civil rights march. INQ2241 acknowledged that it would have been essential for Army commanders policing marches to be properly appraised of the history of marches and the tactics adopted by the IRA during the course of such marches, but said that he had never provided such an analysis.
Had there been such an analysis and, Counsel contended, had the matter been thought about rationally, they would have realised that it was in the interests of the IRA for the maximum possible number of people to march in protest against internment and therefore not in their interest to provoke violence and bloodshed in the context of a civil rights march.
Counsel further contended that the Army commanders on Bloody Sunday were in fact operating on a false basis, fuelled by the Intelligence Services, that there would be a blood bath instigated by the IRA, a suggestion vehemently dismissed by INQ2241.
4.2 The ‘David’ memo
A signal purportedly sent by the Director of Intelligence, known to the Inquiry as ‘David’ to 8th Brigade HQ on 27th January, included information from a source described as “reliable” that the marchers would be “armed with sticks and stones” and that “the IRA will use the crowd as cover”.
INQ2241 told the Tribunal that this information had been received by ‘David’ in a signal from the Security Services in London (which the Tribunal has been unable to find). He had not personally seen the signal from London but had been told about its contents by the Director of Intelligence, who had also told him that the source was very reliable. INQ2241 said that this was the only reliable information received to support his and David’s view that the IRA would be active on Bloody Sunday.
However, despite the suggested importance of the information and despite the fact that he described himself as “being in constant communication with Brigade intelligence officers” to direct and brief them, it was his evidence that he had not taken any action following receipt of the signal and had not discussed its contents with any of these intelligence officers prior to Bloody Sunday. He denied that this was because he knew the signal to be of no value. He also took issue with Colonel Steele’s expressed surprise at the signal (which he claimed not to have been shown at the time of Bloody Sunday) and the Colonel’s testimony that the signal ran contrary to everything that 8th Brigade had been told to expect on the day, i.e., that the marchers would be orderly and peaceful.
He also confirmed that this was what was referred to by HQNI Chief of Staff Brigadier Tickell in a subsequent signal as “a reliable and detailed intelligence report… [which] confirmed earlier reports… that the IRA would be using the crowd and hooligan cover technique during the march on 30th January to provide opportunities for attacks on the Security Forces”. He explained that there were in fact no other reports to this effect, and that the “earlier reports” described by the Brigadier referred to the undocumented information received from low-grade sources described above.
4.3 The aftermath of Bloody Sunday
He was adamant that HQNI had not provided information to Colonel Tugwell on the basis of which he made an erroneous claim on BBC radio on 31st January 1972, stating that four of the Bloody Sunday dead were on the wanted list. However, he was involved in providing intelligence on the dead, the wounded and on civilian witnesses at the Widgery Inquiry to the Army team. He could not assist in locating the documents produced.
It was also his evidence that in the summer of 1972 he had received information from Special Branch that an arrested IRA suspect had confessed to firing two shots from the Rossville Flats on Bloody Sunday. However, the man had subsequently withdrawn his admission and the matter had not been pursued. This was, he said, the only subsequent information he received concerning the day’s events. Again, however, it does not feature in any contemporaneous documents or reports.
SUMMARY
OF PROCEEDINGS
Paragraph 1: Monday 13th
Paragraph 2: Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th
Paragraphs 3 and 4: Thursday 16th
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
