A key official in the first Bloody Sunday investigation today denied that that inquiry team had set out to "pile up" the case against the men who were shot dead.
Mr William Smith (85) secretary to the Widgery Inquiry in 1972, denied it had used forensic evidence to "pile up the case against the deceased".
He told the Saville Inquiry, sitting in London, that it had never been an "objective" to sway in this way the first probe into the shooting of 13 unarmed people by paratroopers during a civil rights march in Derry on January 30th, 1972.
Mr Smith - a former First Secretary in the UK High Commission in South Africa - also strongly rejected allegations that he had been involved in, or knew of, "a conspiracy to suppress film and photographic evidence" of the events of Bloody Sunday.
The retired civil servant read out in full an undated memo he had written to Lord Widgery, the then Lord Chief Justice (LCJ) who chaired the original investigation.
It read: "The LCJ will pile up the case against the deceased, including forensic coincidence and the ... readiness of local people to remove guns, but will conclude that he cannot find with certainty that any one of the 13 was a gunman."
Mr Michael Mansfield QC, acting for families of several of the dead and injured, asked Mr Smith what this statement meant.
"The question is, therefore, whether before this was written...you had gleaned from the Lord Chief Justice that one of the objectives that he had was to pile up the case against the deceased," the lawyer said.
Mr Smith replied: "Certainly not, I did not form any such impression at any time in the proceedings."
When completed in April 1972, the Widgery Report found there was no breakdown in discipline and that soldiers acted bravely.
The hearing was adjourned until Monday.