The brother of one of the 13 men shot dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday 27 years ago said yesterday there was now official forensic confirmation that his brother was an unarmed innocent civilian when he was gunned down. Mr Liam Wray, whose brother Jim was shot dead in the Bogside area of Derry in January 1972, said the contents of fresh forensic evidence provided to the Saville inquiry vindicated his family's campaign to overturn the original finding that his brother had been a gunman or had been close to a gunman when shot.
A dossier compiled by three independent forensic experts was presented to solicitors representing the victims' families last Monday and its contents were released at a news conference in Derry yesterday. One of the report's authors dismissed the original forensic findings as "worthless" and said that the forensic procedures used in 1972 were flawed. "Because of what Dr John Martin, the NIO forensic scientist, told the Widgery inquiry in 1972 about my brother, my brother has been described as a gunman for the last 27 years," said Mr Wray. "It is now clear that that evidence was flawed and this new report is a vindication of our case and vindicates that Jim and the other men who were shot were innocent.
"We have fought to have his name cleared for 27 years and for those responsible for his murder to be brought to justice. This report is a major step forward for us and it contains fantastic revelations," he said. Meanwhile the Wray family solicitor, Mr Greg McCartney, said the new forensic report "totally discredited" the findings of the Widgery inquiry. "This report was carried out by three independent, non-partisan forensic experts appointed by the Saville inquiry. The original reports have been totally discredited and described as worthless.
"The report contains, for the first time, independent confirmation from an external source, which has no interest in the outcome of the inquiry, that Jim Wray was not a gunman and that he was shot twice in the back while lying on the ground," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Des Doherty, solicitor for the family of victim Barney McGuigan, said the new forensic evidence proved that Mr McGuigan had been shot in the back of the head with a dumdum bullet. "These reports, and they are not our reports, they are the Saville inquiry's reports, confirm what my clients have always believed and that is that their father was killed by a British paratrooper on the streets of Derry using a dumdum bullet. "These independent reports are both revealing and disturbing in that they prove conclusively that the forensic tests carried out in 1972 and the results of those tests are worthless," he said.
Mr Paddy MacDermott, solicitor for the family of victim William Nash, said the new forensic evidence totally discredited the original forensic evidence.
"The important thing is that this report could have been written in 1972. It is not a report which could only have been written because of scientific advances . . . "It states that none of the deceased was proven to have used firearms, therefore this report effectively wipes out one of the main planks of the Widgery conclusions and effectively renders null and void the decision of the Widgery inquiry. "If nothing else was to happen in terms of the Saville inquiry, Widgery would be dead in the water," he said.