WEAPONS used by paratroopers on Bloody Sunday have ended up in the hands of the army in Sierra Leone, paramilitary police in Beirut and even in an Arkansas gun shop.

A British police investigation, launched on behalf of Lord Saville’s inquiry into the shooting dead of 13 demonstrators in a banned civil rights march in Londonderry in 1972, has tracked down some of the guns with a view to doing forensic tests on them. A 14th man died of his injuries four months later. The shootings fuelled much of the subsequent violence of the Troubles.

Details and serial numbers of 29 SLR rifles, used by the paras, were known because they had been submitted by the army for forensic testing to the Widgery tribunal, held in 1972 in the immediate aftermath of the massacre.

But Saville, who is expected to produce his report into the atrocity some time next spring, wanted to re-examine the guns in the hope that modern forensic methods might produce fresh clues as to which soldier shot which civilian. In particular, the inquiry wanted to establish whether any of the SLR rifles, which the army stopped using in 1997, had been adapted to fire lower- calibre .22 bullets.

Major-General Robert Ford, the British Army commander in Northern Ireland at the time, had recommended in a top- secret report that marksmen be allowed to shoot dead trouble-makers, with rifles altered to fire less powerful bullets. The tribunal wanted to test if this had been put into effect on Bloody Sunday, when Kevin McElhinney, one of the dead, appeared to have been shot with just such a bullet.

The “Operation Apollo” team was headed by Detective Chief Inspector Steve Walters of the West Mercia constabulary and Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Nicholls of the Ministry of Defence police. It scoured the world for the 29 weapons, but succeeded in recovering only a few.

Many were disposed of just days before Saville’s inquiry started on January 29, 1998, with some melted down for scrap metal and others sold to international dealers. At least two were destroyed after Saville had asked that they be preserved.

The Apollo report, some sections of which were obtained by The Sunday Times under the Freedom of Information Act, concludes that there had not been a conspiracy to destroy evidence. “What occurred was a mixture of mistakes, human error and negligence,” it states.

The report also says that there was “evidence of a degree of contempt and resistance” to the weapons probe.

Orders to “segregate” five rifles were ignored, with the result that two were sold to a private company as scrap metal.

One memo uncovered made light of Saville’s determination to find the guns, saying: “On Tuesday, the Battle of Hastings inquiry will want to find the longbow which put Harold’s eye out”, a reference to the death of the Anglo-Saxon king during the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066.

Indentifying arsenal was also difficult. Some weapons had had new barrels fitted, or in other cases, the serial numbers given by the army were incomplete. The inquiry discovered that 50 weapons matched the partial serial numbers for the 29 guns, a phenomenon referred to as “ghosts”.

One gun was tracked to Sierra Leone, where the army had used it in a civil war. Another was used by paramilitary police in Beirut and one ended up in Drifters gun shop in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Greg McCartney, a solicitor acting for the family of James Wray, who was killed on Bloody Sunday, criticised the army for failing to preserve the weapons. He said: “Why hold onto these rifles for 26 years and then begin destroying them at a rapid rate as soon as the incident becomes the subject of a new inquiry?” He added: “The family that I represent will be upset at the prospect of the guns that were used to murder people on Bloody Sunday being sold around the world and used in slaughter in Beirut and other places.”

The Widgery tribunal attempted to aportion blame between marchers and the troops and was widely discredited. Lord Saville’s tribunal was set up as a result. It has lasted seven years and cost £150m (€218m).

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