McGuinness: IRA’s guns quiet on Bloody Sunday

By Anne Cadwallader

DERRY — Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness is to tell the Bloody Sunday tribunal that he was the IRA’s second in command in Derry on Bloody Sunday and that he ordered that no attacks be mounted on the British Army during the 1972 civil rights march that ended with the killing of 14 people.

McGuinness, in a statement delivered Monday through his lawyers, said he will tell the Bloody Sunday tribunal that he ordered all IRA weapons be put into a secure dump in the Creggan estate and that any of its members who attended the march did so unarmed.

The statement marked the first time that McGuinness, a Sinn Fein leader who is Northern Ireland’s minister for education, has publicly discussed his actions during Bloody Sunday. It was not, however, the first time he has admitted IRA membership, though he had not previously done so while in Northern Ireland. He twice publicly made statements to that effect during court hearings in the Republic.

McGuinness said he will tell the tribunal that eight IRA men in the city were armed on Bloody Sunday but that they were divided into two units, one in Brandywell and the other in Creggan, on a defensive, "stand-by" capacity.

He will say that he attended the march himself, from beginning to end, and that claims by an unnamed British Army double agent, code-named "Infliction," to the Tribunal that he, McGuinness, had admitted firing the first shot that sparked the massacre are "rubbish" and "lies."

"I believe the British Army got away with murder on Bloody Sunday and they are still trying to get away with murder at the Bloody Sunday tribunal," McGuinness said. "There is a battle between the people of Derry and the British establishment at the Guildhall.

"The relatives of those killed on Bloody Sunday are in the forefront of this battle and I intend to stand with them in that — and that is why I have decided to give evidence."

Unionists such as Ian Paisley junior and Gregory Campbell of the DUP and Jeffrey Donaldson of the Ulster Unionists have demanded McGuinness’s arrest, prosecution and his resignation from the Executive.

Under the rules of the Tribunal, however, any evidence he gives cannot be used in any subsequent prosecution, so he cannot be charged with IRA membership. McGuinness has already served a two-year sentence in Portlaoise jail on this charge.

McGuinness sent a lengthy draft statement, through his lawyers, to the tribunal on Monday. He is expected to be interviewed within the next two weeks by the tribunal’s own solicitors before making a formal statement and giving personal evidence within the next few months.

According to sources, the Sinn Fein minister will confirm to the inquiry that the IRA was asked to accept that Derry "should be peaceful to facilitate the march." He informed the families of the dead himself last Saturday at a meeting in the city.