Army told IRA demo would be peaceful

Army commanders were told by intelligence officers that the IRA had no plans to fire on British troops on Bloody Sunday, Colin Wallace, the former army agent, will claim at the Saville inquiry next week.

Mr Wallace will say that the provisional and official wings of the IRA and the civil rights marchers had agreed that the march through Londonderry would be peaceful. He will claim that a briefing on that intelligence, which came from Republican paramilitaries and the march organisers, was passed to Northern Ireland army headquarters and should have gone to the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet's Joint Intelligence Committee.

In the event, 14 unarmed marchers were shot dead by members of the Paratroop Regiment, who allege that they came under fire.

A highly controversial figure, Mr Wallace was involved in a secret psychological operations unit, set up by the army in the 1970s to spread disinformation with MI5 and MI6.

Mr Wallace's evidence, which will be heard in Derry before Lord Saville's inquiry moves to London next week, will again focus attention on the army's tactics on the day of the march, 30 January 1972.

Mr Wallace admits he does not know if his unit's reports were given to army commanders in Londonderry, who later insisted that their intelligence suggested the IRA would use the march as cover for an attack on British forces.

These conflicting claims will feature heavily in the London hearings, which will hear crucial evidence from 350 army commanders and paratroopers who were directly involved in Bloody Sunday.

The hearings will move to London after a group of paratroopers persuaded the Court of Appeal that their lives would be at risk if they were forced to appear in Londonderry.

In his written statement to the inquiry, Mr Wallace said their intelligence suggested that IRA commanders were "flexing their muscles" after returning from training in Ireland. But he added: "I must stress that the intelligence we had was that the march was likely to pass off peacefully. Although the IRA had in the past made use of stone-throwing crowds as cover for snipers, there was no evidence that they would be involved with the march on this occasion."

In his statement, Mr Wallace also heavily criticises the attempt by the army to claim that several of the Bloody Sunday victims were on the terrorist wanted list. That, he insists, was wrong and "broke all the rules".