NORTHERN Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said yesterday that he would have killed every single British soldier in Derry in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday if he had been able to.
The self-confessed former IRA man said feelings were running so high in the wake of the killings that he would have had no difficulty killing every soldier in the city.
Some 13 people attending a civil rights march in the Bogside area of Derry in
1972 were shot dead by paratroopers. A 14th died later from his injuries.
Derry-born and raised, McGuinness, the Sinn Fein MP and MLA, said the shooting "hardened our attitudes considerably".
Speaking during a wide-ranging interview on RTE, the Irish state radio station, McGuinness said: "There is no doubt whatsoever that in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday there was a renewed determination to oppose the British Army and the RUC.
"If I had had the ability to kill every single British soldier that was on the streets of Derry, I would have killed every single one of them without any difficulty whatsoever."
In 2003, McGuinness told the long-running Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday that two weeks after the shootings he was leading the IRA in Derry.
He only revealed the details of his involvement at the very top of the Republican movement, which he claimed to have joined in 1970, after securing an assurance that he had immunity from prosecution.
The report of the official Bloody Sunday inquiry is nowhere near being finished, the Government revealed recently.
What has become the longest-running inquiry in UK legal history has run up a bill of £181.2m so far, Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward revealed in a Commons written reply this month.
He said that the tribunal, headed by Lord Saville, had told him that due to the complexity and volume of evidence it took during public hearings, which ended more than three years ago, it was not possible to say when the report would be completed.
Woodward said: "We are informed that the submission of the report is not imminent and that recent media speculation that the report will be concluded in May 2008 has no basis in fact."
The Rev William McCrea, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for South Antrim, said McGuinness's comments added weight to what his party had been saying: that the confidence did not yet exist for the devolution of policing and justice powers to the power-sharing Executive at Stormont.
Commenting on the recent urgings of Shaun Woodward to complete devolution, McCrea said: "The Secretary of State may believe he understands the mood of the Unionist people, but I can assure him that no Unionist whom I have spoken to is growing impatient about getting their hands on policing powers in Northern Ireland."
The DUP has been demanding the disbanding of the IRA Army Council before policing and justice powers are handed back.
McCrea added: "The Secretary of State may not find the existence of the so-called IRA Army Council an obstacle, but I can assure him it is.
"There is no room in any democracy for the so-called Army Council of a bloodthirsty terrorist organisation."
The full article contains 540 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
