Bloody Sunday Tribunal/Day 402: A man who was one of the Provisional IRA's main bomb manufacturers in Derry in the months before, during and after the Bloody Sunday killings, and whose brother-in-law was killed when a Provisional IRA bomb exploded prematurely 10 months after Bloody Sunday, confirmed yesterday that he served four years of a 10-year prison sentence following his 1979 convictions for 14 bombing offences between December 1971 and June 1972.
Mr Michael Clarke, who said that his nickname of "Michael Killer Clarke" was "the invention of British Intelligence", also told the inquiry into the January 1972 killings by British army paratroopers of 13 unarmed civilians in the Bogside area of Derry during a civil rights march, that he had threatened to murder his pregnant sister. This was in the immediate aftermath of the killings, because, at the time, she was married to a British soldier.
He told the inquiry he knew nothing about the circumstances in which five British soldiers were killed in IRA bomb explosions in Derry between October 1971 and November 1972.
The witness, now aged 58, said he joined the Provisional IRA when he was 25.
An apprentice electrician familiar with circuitry, he became "an explosives officer almost immediately".
He said that among the targets he'd bombed was the Guildhall, the building in which he gave his evidence yesterday.
He said he had made the 200 lb bomb which badly damaged the building in a Provisional IRA bomb attack six months after Bloody Sunday.
The witness told the inquiry's three judges that, in addition to making large bombs, he also made nail and blast bombs, timers, detonating mechanisms and incendiary devices before he left the IRA in 1973.
He said that he and other members of the Provisional IRA had been ordered by their superior officer not to use any guns or bombs on Bloody Sunday.
"As at January 30th, 1972, I had all the explosives that I knew about. Nobody, including Martin McGuinness, came to me asking to use explosives or detonators for the march," he added.
Mr Clarke said that both he and other members of the Provisional IRA remained in the Creggan Estate during the Bloody Sunday march.
The first he knew of the killings was when marchers started to return from the Bogside.
"People were coming back to the Creggan, known volunteers were talking. They were asking questions. What happened? Anybody we know shot? How many shot? Did anybody open fire? Did anybody shoot?
"Why did the Brits commit genocide down there? What was the reason, is there a reason? There was panic, there was chaos and stunned disbelief," he said.
The inquiry resumes today.