The clash came during McGuinness’s testimony Tuesday to the tribunal in Derry, where he refused to identify people and places associated with the events in which the 14 victims were shot dead by British soldiers in 1972.
McGuinness and the chairman of the tribunal, Lord Saville, clashed over whether he should give the address of a “safe house” where he had met other IRA members to pass on instructions that no attacks should be made on the British army on Bloody Sunday.
About an hour and a half into his evidence, Saville adjourned the tribunal after, he said, McGuinness had refused to answer questions, including who was explosives officer in the city in 1972.
Saville said he failed to understand why McGuinness would not answer these questions and two things could now happen: McGuinness risked depriving the tribunal of the truth and he could also give the impression he had something to hide.
McGuinness said that over decades of police interrogations he had never identified anyone associated with him or the IRA because to do so would be in his terms “an act of gross betrayal.”
McGuinness also said that a British informer, who claimed he was involved in attacks on the British army on the day, is a fantasist. Paddy Ward claims membership of the Fianna in Derry and said McGuinness supplied detonators to its members on Bloody Sunday.
McGuinness said Paddy Ward was in his opinion a fantasist, a liar and an informer who was dependent on elements in British military intelligence who had used him over the years.
After the 15-minute adjournment, when the extent of his immunity from prosecution was clarified, McGuinness also told the inquiry that within two weeks of Bloody Sunday he was leading the IRA in Derry.
McGuinness also said he would not be made an exception by being asked about his republican career — that would be for some form of truth and reconciliation commission should all the people of Northern Ireland be prepared to contribute to such an undertaking.
He has already dismissed claims by another British informer, that he fired the first shot on Bloody Sunday, as a “blatant lie.”
The DUP’s Gregory Campbell has branded the tribunal “the most expensive public inquiry in British legal history” and said it would cost over