SAVILLE INQUIRY: There was no top-level cover-up to protect British soldiers who killed 13 unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday, the British army's second-in-command in Northern Ireland at the time has said.
Maj-Gen Robert Ford, who as Commander of Land Forces (CLF) was in charge of the army's day-to-day operations in 1972, yesterday told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry: "There was no cover-up at all at my level."
Lord Saville, the chairman of the inquiry, said that parts of the mass-arrest operation at the civil rights march in the Bogside no-go area on January 30th 1972 was "radically different" from what had been planned. He was referring to the order for the paras to burst into the Bogside, which came with Sir Robert's approval.
They had been supposed to go in on foot on two flanks, from the Presbyterian church and Barrier 14, to try to trap rioters. This did not happen. Instead, there was a frontal assault in armoured vehicles down Rossville Street.
Mr Arthur Harvey QC, representing many of the bereaved families at the hearing in London, said that the use of armoured vehicles had been a "last-minute, last-ditch adjustment" when the army's original plans had broken down because the orders lacked detail and in-depth knowledge of the local area. This meant that those vehicles were "charging into a fleeing crowd", he added.
Sir Robert's claim that they were deployed only after there was clear separation between the rioters and the innocent crowd had been "grafted on" at a later stage to justify it, Mr Harvey said.
No responsibility had been taken for planning failures from the higher command, including the CLF down to 8 Brigade, covering all the paras in Derry, but failures of an operational nature were the responsibility of the Parachute Regiment, counsel suggested.
Sir Robert replied: "That is untrue. Of course I was responsible overall, and there was no suggestion of trying to hide anything at all." He added that an enormous amount of complex information was being dealt with at the time.
By 4.10 p.m., when the paras moved in allegedly to drive back troublemakers, there was no evidence from the army's helicopter to suggest that innocent civilians and hooligans had separated, the inquiry was told. This was vital, to reduce risk to innocent civilians, and it had to be obvious before an arrest operation was launched.
The hearing was adjourned until today. - (PA)