A former Official IRA gunman who admitted trying to kill a British soldier on Bloody Sunday today denied opening fire before the army had shot and wounded two civilians.
The ex-paramilitary, known as OIRA1, said he and a comrade had gone to collect a defective weapon in the Bogside.
He insisted that he fired a shot from a second floor flat after hearing cries from the crowd that two men, he later discovered to be Damien 'Bubbles' Donaghy and John Johnston, had been shot and wounded.
OIRA1 told the Saville Inquiry he did not see them being shot because his view was obscured by wooden slats.
But Edmund Lawson QC suggested that if the timing of his shot was accurate, it was "inconceivable" he would not have seen the two men being shot. The lawyer put it to him he must have fired his rifle before the shooting of Mr Donaghy and Mr Johnston.
"If you shot before the shooting of Donaghy and Johnston and were leaving your vantage point, that would explain, would it not, why you saw nothing related to their shooting?" he asked.
OIRA1 replied: "I do not know what it would explain. The fact is it is not true."
The inquiry is investigating the events of January 30th, 1972, when 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead by British paratroopers during a civil rights march in the Bogside area of Derry.
Last week, during the first day of his evidence, he denied that he and a colleague, OIRA2 had brought the rifle to the location with the purpose of mounting an attack on the army.
PA