With the legal case of the Bloody Sunday paratroopers due to be outlined next Monday, counsel for their victims called on those soldiers who shot innocent people to admit they did so.
Mr Michael Mansfield QC said yesterday the "cover story" being resurrected on behalf of the soldiers who used lethal force without justification was to say there were other victims on the day who had been acting unlawfully.
A synopsis, disclosed yesterday, of the legal case of the soldiers includes the claim there were civilian gunmen operating on Bloody Sunday, and many "missing casualties" who "are to be inferred to have been gunmen".
Mr Mansfield examined aspects of this synopsis, which maintains the soldiers "reacted reasonably to mob violence and the use of lethal force against them".
It asserts the soldiers fired shots "at those whom they believed to be threatening them or others - and not indiscriminately" and that "there was no executive or other policy to teach the IRA or Bogsiders a lesson".
According to the synopsis, the lawyer representing several hundreds of the soldiers who were in Derry on Bloody Sunday will argue that: "Those clients who fired live rounds aimed and shot at, and only at, those whom they believed to be gunmen or nail bombers, threatening lethal violence to them or to others."
Commenting on this, Mr Mansfield asked: "So who killed those who were engaged in no illegal activity at all? Someone knows, and we ask again, those who know should break ground at last . . ."
The legal synopsis goes on to say: "However, it does not follow that those who have been identified as having been killed or wounded on 30th January 1972 were themselves gunmen or nail bombers."
Mr Mansfield said: "What does that mean? It is not saying that the military killed them . . . or is it saying the military did kill them but they were not gunmen and it was not justified . . . or [is it] saying they were near people who were gunmen? What is being said?"
Counsel said none of the people he represented was involved in any activity that could have justified the use of lethal force. He added: "The only way the soldiers can justify what they did - and we wait to see whether they admit firing at these innocent victims - is to say there were other victims acting unlawfully and they faced . . . a storm of opposition."
Among the things the soldiers claimed they had faced on the day were: high-velocity fire, small arms fire, machine-gun fire, petrol bombs, acid bombs and nail bombs. It was "quite remarkable", even "quite miraculous", that not a single soldier suffered a single injury as a result of this storm, counsel said.
Mr Mansfield submitted that the military operation mounted on Bloody Sunday was designed by officers such as Gen Ford and Col Wilford to put down a marker for the eventual reoccupation of the "no-go" areas.
". . . the death of innocent people was purely collateral. That is the term now being used in other theatres of war. Make no mistake - re-occupation of Free Derry or the no-go areas was the end game," said Mr Mansfield.
The inquiry will resume on Monday.