Bloody Sunday Inquiry

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry or the Saville Report after its chairman, Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 by British Prime Minister Tony Blair after campaigns for a second inquiry by families of those killed and injured in Derry on Bloody Sunday during the peak of The Troubles. It was published on 15 June 2010. The inquiry was set up to establish a definitive version of the events of Sunday 30 January 1972, superseding the tribunal set up under Lord Widgery that had reported on 19 April 1972,^[1] 11 weeks after the events, and to resolve the accusations of a whitewash that had surrounded it.

The inquiry took the form of a tribunal established under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, and consisted of Lord Saville, William L. Hoyt, the former Chief Justice of New Brunswick and John L. Toohey, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia.^[2]

The judges finished hearing evidence on 23 November 2004,^[3] and reconvened once again on 16 December to listen to testimony from another witness, known as Witness X, who had been unavailable earlier.^[4]

The report was published on 15 June 2010. The British prime minister David Cameron addressed the House of Commons that afternoon where he acknowledged, among other things, that the paratroopers had fired the first shot, had fired on fleeing unarmed civilians, and shot and killed one man who was already wounded.^[5] He then apologised on behalf of the British Government.^[6]