The Bloody Sunday Inquiry: A British Security Service agent who provided intelligence about the activities of the Provisional IRA in Derry for over 10 years was described yesterday by his MI-5 handler as "a reliable and truthful agent".
The agent, code-named "Infliction", was paid up to £25,000 a year for providing information about the IRA. Among the information he gave to his handler was an allegation that Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness had fired the first shot on Bloody Sunday which precipitated the shootings of 13 unarmed civilians in Derry in January 1972.
Infliction's former handler, known as Officer A, told the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings yesterday that he first met the agent in 1984.
Officer A, who is currently in charge of the section in the Security Service that deals with the investigation of Irish terrorism, told the inquiry that he regarded all the information Infliction gave him about Mr McGuinness as honest. He said Infliction had been friendly with Mr McGuinness and bore no ill-feeling or grudge towards him.
"We had some information which corroborated the fact that they knew each other and had known each other for some time and appeared to get on well."
Infliction, who is still alive, made a statement to the inquiry, but the tribunal's three judges ruled last month that he would not be called to give evidence, for fear it could endanger his life.
His allegation that Mr McGuinness fired the opening shot has been described as "bogus and wholly unsubstantiated" by Mr McGuinness, who was second in command of the Provisional IRA in Derry at the time of the Bogside killings.
Officer A said that when he first met Infliction in 1984, he had already been an agent "for a matter of years" and had also been "a leading member of the Provisional IRA who no longer has access to the organisation".
The witness said that during their first meeting, the agent told him of a conversation he'd had with Mr McGuinness, in which "Martin McGuinness had admitted to Infliction that he had personally fired the shot from a Thompson machine gun".
Infliction, who continued to provide information to the Security Service until the early 90s, was, said Officer A, at one stage "a leading member of the Provisional IRA".
The witness said that although Infliction's information was "from his own perspective", he and others within the Security Service believed that "his intelligence was reliable".
Members of Mr McGuinness's legal team were at the hearing during Officer A's evidence, but the Sinn Féin politician instructed his legal representatives not to cross-examine any of the Security Service witnesses because of his objection to "the inquiry's handling of the intelligence agents".
Officer A will be cross-examined when the inquiry resumes today.