The families of the 14 men shot dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday in January 1972, said yesterday their future participation in the Saville inquiry depended on the outcome of any Appeal Court ruling against yesterday's High Court decision in London.
At a press conference in Derry just hours after the ruling, Mr Peter Madden, solicitor for several of the victims' families, described the ruling as "a major setback".
Mr John Kelly, whose brother Michael was one of the Bloody Sunday victims, said the High Court's 2-1 majority decision to grant the soldiers anonymity when giving evidence was "an insult".
Asked if the families would consider pulling out of the inquiry set up by the British government in January 1998, Mr Madden said the families would make a judgment after the outcome of any appeal.
"The families will be watching to see whether or not at the end of the day there will be a level playing field. Before the families embark on any public hearings at the end of September, the families of the victims and of the wounded would have to consider if there is a level playing field. The families are the best placed people to judge that, but the public can also assess if there is a level playing field in relation to this inquiry," he said.
Mr Madden said he believed it was "a foregone conclusion" that the tribunal would appeal the ruling.
Meanwhile, Mr Kelly said the issue of anonymity was vitally important to the families.
"Personally I know who shot my brother and I want to see him in an open forum in court giving the reasons why he murdered my brother. It is important that he cannot be hidden behind a screen and I want to look at him eye to eye and find out why he killed my brother," he said.
"We have known the names of the soldiers for a long, long time and in the last 27 years not one of them has ever been targeted in relation to Bloody Sunday." Mr Madden said the families' perception was that the English judiciary had interfered with what was purported to be an international impartial inquiry.
"The families simply want to know who were involved in killing their loved ones. It is very important that the state's authorities come along in a public court and justify what they did.
"The case the soldiers made was that if their names were released, they would be endangered, but Col Wilford [commander of the paratroopers on Bloody Sunday] has made many public statements recently and in 27 years neither he nor his family has been attacked." Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionist MP for East Londonderry, Mr William Ross, said he welcomed the High Court's ruling in favour of the 17 soldiers.
"It is great news. I think the High Court has shown good sense in protecting the identity of the individual soldiers concerned. In the light of this ruling, many more people will be willing to tell their story and whenever they do, it will mean that a great deal of the propaganda, which is the modern name for lies, which has been directed against the paratroopers will be undermined.
"The danger to the soldiers has not been completely removed, but at least a measure of comfort and a measure of cover provided by this ruling will enable them to give evidence in greater safety than would have hitherto been the case", he said.
However, Sinn Fein's Mr Mitchel McLaughlin said the ruling was a disappointment.
The Ulster Unionist Party's Westminster spokesman on security, Mr Ken Maginnis, welcomed the decision to grant anonymity to the soldiers, describing it as a "sensible approach".
The Democratic Unionist Party's Assembly member for Mid-Ulster, the Rev William McCrea, condemned the "muddle" over the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
He claimed one of his constituents had received a communication from the inquiry asking him to appear before it as a soldier who participated during that event. According to Mr McCrea, his constituent had never been a soldier, nor had he been in Northern Ireland at the time. The president of the Alliance Party, Dr Philip McGarry, said the overriding priority was to get at the truth of what really happened on Bloody Sunday.
"It is important, however, that the commission is not distracted by the anonymity issue from doing its real job," he added.
The Northern Ireland spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, Mr Lembit Opik, said the inquiry's "purpose is to establish the truth and I hope this decision helps it achieve this aim."