Bloody Sunday Inquiry: A former civil rights campaigner and Stormont MP described seeing a man shot dead as he tried to go to the aid of a dying man on Bloody Sunday.
Mr Ivan Cooper, the 900th witness to give evidence to the Saville Inquiry, said yesterday that the victim, Mr Barney McGuigan, was waving a piece of cloth as he went on his errand of mercy.
He said Mr McGuigan had only taken a few steps when he heard a cracking noise. "The scene which I saw seemed to be in slow motion and the few seconds which this scene lasted were telescoped.
"Barney just folded up. He crumpled and fell down on his side, I think it was his right side, like a bag rolling off a lorry. As soon as I reached Barney, I knew that he had been fatally wounded. I was absolutely appalled. He was lying in a pool of blood, which sticks strongly in my memory."
Mr McGuigan was one of 13 unarmed civilians shot dead by the Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march in Derry's Bogside area in January 1972.
Mr Cooper, a Protestant, was chairman of Derry Citizens Act- ion Committee, which was campaigning for equal rights for Catholics. He was also a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and MP for Mid-Derry.
Pointing out that he had had a minor part to play in the organisation of the march, he said a few days before it took place he met four members of the Provisional IRA to make clear that it should be non-violent.
"I received confirmation 48 hours after my meeting with the IRA that the IRA would locate itself on the Creggan Estate and would confine itself to the Creggan Estate while the march proceeded," he said.
Mr Cooper said he was speak- ing on the platform at Free Derry Corner when he heard distinctive cracks, which he took at first to be rubber bullets.
He said one of the other speakers, Ms Bernadette Devlin, the former MP for Mid-Ulster, told him: "That's lead, Coops."
He went on: "I was pinned to the ground in front of the platform. There was now a large open space in front of me, as people had moved away, and I became more conscious of bullets, maybe 20 to 25, flying around."
Amid the shootings he said he received a phone call from a member of the Provos - which he took to mean that they were going to retaliate.
"I picked up the phone and the person making the call asked me: 'Ivan, have there been people killed?' I answered 'yes', whereupon the person said to me 'the deal is off, we are coming in'."
The former MP said he believed it was the soldiers on the City Walls who held the key to what happened on Bloody Sunday.
"I believe that the topography of the streets in and around the Bogside area may have given the army the false impression that it was under serious attack," he said.
"I am strongly of the opinion that soldiers on the City Wall were firing, which resulted in confusion between the soldiers on the City Wall and the Paras on the ground."