The deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, has agreed to give evidence about IRA activities in his native Derry after a request from the family of a republican shot dead by the British army in 1972.
McGuinness had been asked to issue a statement about the IRA’s Derry Brigade during the period of Operation Motorman, when the British army dismantled so-called “no go” areas of the city where barriers prevented the free movement of security forces.
The request came from the family of Seamus Bradley, a 19-year-old IRA member whose loved ones allege he was arrested, tortured and then shot by British soldiers in July 1972 at the height of the operation.
A series of judicial hearings are reviewing inquests into 97 deaths from the Troubles, many involving the security forces.
It is understood that a solicitor acting for McGuinness will give evidence on his behalf to the Belfast court hearing the judicial inquiry.
Bradley’s family have claimed that the use of lethal force against him was not justified because the IRA was not active in Derry that day.
McGuinness has admitted he was a senior IRA commander in Derry during that year, which began with Bloody Sunday, the killing of 13 civilians in January. Giving evidence at the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday, he stated that he was second-in-command of the Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA. Operation Motorman came six months after Bloody Sunday.
McGuinness has said he left the IRA in 1974 – a claim long disputed by some of his former comrades, who allege that he rose up the organisation’s ranks to become the Provisionals’ chief of staff in the early 1980s.
