Long wait for Bloody Sunday report

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By John Thorne BBC News, Belfast

Soldiers shot 13 people dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday

The report of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday has been delayed until the autumn of 2009, causing huge disappointment to relatives.

January 30 1972 - forever Bloody Sunday in the annals of the Troubles in Northern Ireland - was not the bloodiest day, but perhaps the most significant in helping to decide the direction and progress of the bitter conflict in the decades that followed.

Nearly 37 years later and at a cost of £172m and still counting, the most definitive inquiry and re-examination of what really happened is still on hold.

Lord Saville's officials have confirmed it will be autumn 2009, five years after the investigation ended, before the final report is released.

Brutality

The actions of the Parachute Regiment troopers in shooting dead 13 unarmed civil rights protesters in the so-called no-go Bogside district of Derry swelled the ranks of the Provisional IRA and gave invaluable weight to Irish republican arguments within the Catholic community.

The international reaction was almost totally damning, and set the British government on the road to suspending the unionist administration at Stormont, taking over direct rule control of law and order in Northern Ireland.

The brutality of events on Bloody Sunday are stark. Paratroopers shot 27 civilians, 13 died that day and a 14th victim sometime later. Even after seven years of the Saville Inquiry, lawyers admitted it was still unclear which soldiers actually fired upon whom.

As a young newspaper journalist I travelled from Belfast to Derry the day after the shootings and reported on the dire lethal consequences of the "getting tough with terrorists" political notion.

The delay is very disappointing and confusing as well Tony DohertyVictim's son <a class="" href="/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7712625.stm">'Disappointment' at inquiry delay </a>

And when Lord Widgery began his adversarial legal inquiry in Coleraine soon after, I heard Parachute Regiment soldiers giving evidence to him from behind screens.

One piece of that evidence still stands out in my mind.

A soldier, identified only by a letter of the alphabet, explaining how he fired scores of shots at a shadowy profile he said he spotted dodging in and out of focus from behind the frosted glass of a bathroom window.

The Widgery report - dubbed the "Widgery whitewash" by the victims' families - was published within 10 weeks.

Much valuable evidence had been excluded, and so began the campaign for another investigation.

When he was prime minister, John Major accepted the Bloody Sunday victims were unarmed civilians, not IRA gunmen, and should be regarded as innocent.

Inquiry opens

But it was not until 1998 that Lord Saville of Newdigate, and the Commonwealth judges who assisted him, were appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair to establish a new inquiry.

That inquiry began hearing evidence at public hearings in March 2000, after a formal opening two years earlier at Derry's Guildhall.

The statistics of the evidence collection are formidable, and the cost prohibitive and for many critics were allowed to run out of control.

More than 920 witnesses were heard including the prime minister in 1972, Sir Edward Heath, 33 policemen, 245 soldiers, 35 IRA or former paramilitary members and seven priests.

The tribunal sat for 433 days in Derry and London.

The inquiry team interviewed and received written statements from around 2,500 Bloody Sunday marchers, witnesses and security forces.

The 33 evidence bundles sent to all the interested parties to the inquiry contained about 30 million words, 13 volumes of photographs, 121 audio-tapes and 100 video-tapes.

Of course the final bill has still to be calculated, but the inquiry's own website "currently expects" the total cost to be £172m, with an additional £15m included to transfer the hearings to London.

'Disappointment and anger'

The new delay has disappointed and angered many. In a letter to the victims' families, Lord Saville apologised but said he and his colleagues were determined to deal fairly, accurately and thoroughly with the issues before them.

Tony Doherty, whose father was shot on Bloody Sunday, said the delay was "very disappointing and confusing as well".

Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said he shared the families' concerns and would be discussing the implications of the delay " as a matter of urgency".

Eamon McCann, chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said confidence in the inquiry was being eroded. The investigation was an enormous task, he conceded, but he said, "some people are beginning to ask themselves, what's going on?"

The saga will continue to creep on at least until September next year, the difficulties of scale, time lapse and the complexity of the witness material helping to make the legal task so complicated.

And in the end the sorry truth is that none of the fatal horrors of Bloody Sunday and its violent aftermath can be put right by a single word that may be in the final Saville report.