Witness complains about anonymity

A witness told the chairman of the inquiry yesterday that people in Derry had got the impression that soldiers were being treated…

A witness told the chairman of the inquiry yesterday that people in Derry had got the impression that soldiers were being treated more favourably than civilians as witnesses.

Mr Donal Deeney, after completing his evidence, complained that he had not been given the option of anonymity, which had been given to all the soldiers.

The chairman, Lord Saville, asked him if he had asked for anonymity. The witness replied: "Everybody was getting shot down for it, so why bother?"

Lord Saville said that the inquiry continued to try to treat everybody in exactly the same way. The witness should not go away with the feeling that the inquiry was treating civilians differently from soldiers.

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In his evidence earlier Mr Deeney said that a couple of American servicemen "from the Yankee base in the Waterside" had told him in a pub in the city centre before Bloody Sunday that the paras had said they were going "to sort us out".

He described seeing Jackie Duddy, Michael Bridge and Hugh Gilmore being shot, and said he had seen a civilian with a pistol in Rossville Flats car park. He also claimed to have seen a soldier, whose features he described, firing shots from the City Walls.