Bloody Sunday Inquiry: A man who was a senior member of the Provisional IRA just over 30 years ago is to give his evidence to the Bloody Sunday inquiry today and tomorrow anonymously.
The former quartermaster of the Derry Command of the Provisional IRA, who submitted his signed 17-page statement to the inquiry last Thursday, has claimed that at the time of the killings he was responsible for the safe keeping of up to 22 guns in the IRA's arsenal of weapons.
The chairman of the inquiry into the killing by paratroopers of 13 unarmed civilians and the wounding of 13 others in the Bogside area of Derry on January 30th, 1972, said yesterday that the man, known as PIRA 17, had submitted in his application for anonymity that his Article 2 rights would be infringed if his identity became widely known.
Lord Saville of Newdigate said that the applicant had provided "confidential information relating to his personal circumstances". He and the inquiry's other judges, Mr Justice William Hoyt and Judge John Toohey, had decided not to circulate the confidential information.
The chairman said the applicant accepted that the interested legal parties before the inquiry were either aware of his identity or would be able to discover it by referring to documents.
"This is an unusual case. However, bearing in mind the nature of the evidence that the applicant is to give and the confidential information with which we have been provided, we are persuaded that our duty to protect his Article 2 rights requires us to order that he be granted anonymity.
"We further order that the necessary security arrangements be put in place to ensure that the applicant is not photographed as he enters or leaves the Guildhall", Lord Saville said.
Meanwhile in his statement the applicant, who is the first Provisional IRA witness to be granted anonymity, says the IRA's membership on Bloody Sunday numbered 30, and among the weapons they had were 11 Lee Enfield .303 rifles, two Thompson sub-machineguns, six handguns and two M1 carbine rifles.
Describing himself as the "quartermaster for the IRA for the whole of the city of Derry", PIRA 17 says that, at a command staff meeting of the IRA the evening before Bloody Sunday, the adjutant issued orders to members.
"I was told by the adjutant what those orders were. They were that no weapons were to be carried and that all weapons would be dumped with the exception of the weapons carried by two active service units in two cars, one in the Creggan and one in the Brandywell. This was strictly adhered to", his statement says.
"I know that my orders were not disobeyed. They could not have been, given my stewardship of the complement."
Meanwhile a witness who was the organiser of a republican youth organisation, the Fianna, immediately before Bloody Sunday, denied yesterday that the Fianna had links with either the Provisional or Official IRA.