Is shooting civilians tending to their wounded an act of terrorism?
there is definite evidence that IRA gunmen were in the Bogside Flats, and that they fired the first shot. The evidence, and this is important, comes from residents in that area, inc the local priest. These people are NOT pro-British, they were Catholic and sympathetic to Irish Nationalism/Republicanism. Yet they clearly state the first shot came from behind, which can only mean the IRA, as the Paras were well in front of the Bogside (the Paras famously had to ‘go into’ the Bogside).
In 1997, on its 25th anniversary programme on that fateful day, the major British TV channel Channel 4 investigated the day fully. And found evidence to support the IRA first theory AND it found photographic evidence, long forgotten, taken by newspaper photographers just prior to the march, of IRA men armed and in and around the flats on the Bogside.
And CH4, btw, as any British person will tell yu, is a left wing TV channel, hardly a staunch defender of everything British.
There is also voluminous evidence since, post ceasefire, from ex-IRA men themselves that the IRA were there and fired first.
Remember this Saville Report has just said Martin McGuinness, Head of the Derry IRA Brigade, carried a submachine gun around that day but didnt fire it. Not even when the Paras were killing 13 people. Does that sound credible?.
IMO the Saville Report has fitted the facts to a predetermined conclusion.
Again, I will not defend the overreaction of the Paras that day, but they did not go into Derry that day with the intent to kill civilians.
You said...
Is shooting civilians tending to their wounded an act of terrorism?
I’d say it would be an act of murder. That day probably marked one of the lowest points in our post war history.
I do believe that the paras thought they were under attack at the outset but the reaction was out of all proportion.