21/01/2002

Hume gives evidence at Bloody Sunday Inquiry

The Foyle Member of Parliament John Hume has begun giving evidence to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in County Londonderry.

Speaking at the Guildhall on Monday January 21, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate told the Saville Inquiry of his fears for the fate of the Civil Rights marchers on that fateful day.

Mr Hume said that he had encountered members of the Parachute Regiment a week before the march when they opened fire on a civil rights meeting at Magilligan Strand, County Londonderry.

He said: “If they were firing rubber bullets and gas on a beach where there could not be any form of violence... I thought, ‘Good Lord, what would they do on the streets of a town and what trouble would they cause’.”

Mr Hume said the key to finding out what had happened in Derry on 30 January 1972, when Paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians, was to find out who had sent the army out on the streets.

The Bloody Sunday inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 by Prime Minister Tony Blair after a campaign by families of those killed and injured. (AMcE)

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