All killings were unjustifiable - Saville

The report did not place any emphasis at all on the often mooted theory that a high level political conspiracy took place in advance of Bloody Sunday and instead blamed the killings on soldiers on the ground. The report also concluded that even if the Parachute Regiment had come under sustained attack from republican paramilitaries the actions of the soldiers were unjustifiable.

The Saville Report also concluded that the Army commander on the ground that day, Colonel Derek Wilford, should not have launched a Support Company of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment into the Bogside and in doing so "failed to inform" the Officer in Command, Brigadier MacLellan - in effect ignoring orders from a superior officer.

The report states that in allowing his troops to advance into the Bogside Colonel Wilford must have appreciated that there was a significant risk that an arrest operation could have led to an armed engagement with republican paramilitaries.

Saville states: "He should have appreciated that if this did happen, then there was also, in view of the numbers of people around, a significant risk that people other than soldiers' justifiable targets would be killed on injured, albeit by accident from Army gunfire. To our minds this was another reason why Colonel Wilford should have not launched an incursion into the Bogside.

"The fact that what in the event happened on Bloody Sunday when soldiers entered the Bogside was not a justifiable response to a lethal attack by republican paramilitaries, but instead soldiers opening fire unjustifiably, cannot provide an answer to this criticism, which is based not on what happened, but what at the time Colonel Wilford thought might happen.

"We have found nothing that suggests to us that Colonel Wilford can be blamed for the incident in which soldiers fired from the derelict building in William Street and injured Damien Donaghey and John Johnston (the first two people wounded on Bloody Sunday). However, the question remains as to whether he realised, or should have realised, that the risk of unjustifiable firing by the soldiers if he sent them into the Bogside was such that for this reason he should not have ordered them to go in."

The overall assessment handed to journalists yesterday also highlighted the belief that soldiers had lost their self-control, saying: "forgetting or ignoring their instructions and training and failing to satisfy themselves that they had identified targets posing a threat of causing death or serious injury - it is at least possible that they did so in the indefensible belief that all the civilians they fired at were probably members of the Provisional or Official IRA."

The final summation within the report's major conclusions reads: "The firing by soldiers of 1 PARA on Bloody Sunday caused the deaths of 13 people and injury to a similar number, none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury.

"What happened on Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the Army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed.

"Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."