Seems that the British Army themselves added an extra £15 to the cost of the inquiry due to their soldiers being too scared to come back to Derry:

From the Bloody Sunday Tribunal Website (http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org)

10. Why did the hearings move from Londonderry to Central London?

In December 2001 the Court of Appeal ruled that the evidence of the military witnesses should not be taken in Londonderry on the grounds that they had reasonable fears for their safety. The Tribunal concluded that for this part of the evidence the Inquiry hearings should move to Great Britain.

On 14 March 2002 the Inquiry announced that the venue for the hearings would be Central Hall, Westminster.

The Inquiry then sat in London between Tuesday 24th September 2002 (Day 237/Witness 572) and 21st October 2003 (Day 386/Witness 842).

The Inquiry returned to the Guildhall, Londonderry on 29 October 2003 to hear the remaining oral evidence.

24. What was the cost of moving the Inquiry to London?

An estimated £15 million of net additional costs arose from the transfer of the hearings to London.

I know most of you will have heard this on the BBC but there are now at least 8 barristers who are “Saville Millionaires”, barristers who have actually earned upwards of £2m as a result of the enquiry.

On ‘Bloody Friday’ the plan was to cause widespread disruption by making the army have to bring the city centre to a standstill. There were a number of car bombs left around the city which would all be phoned in and an accurate description of their location and make and model of the car would be divulged, these areas would then be cleared by the army in time. The mistake the IRA was simply to plant far too many bombs for them to deal with and they were left confused as to how to phone in the warnings meaning there was a significant delay leading to 9 deaths, at least one of those was a soldier. By the way if you want to see faces of those responsible, I know enough about the IRA in that time to suggest that IRA car bombs tended to be overseen by a young man called Gerry Kelly back in the early – mid 70s! He is now Policing and Justice spokesman for his party, Sinn Fein!

On ‘Bloody Sunday’ supposedly the best trained soldiers in the British army shot dead 14 civilians, most if not all unarmed! Some were shot in the back whilst running away from the area! Sure there is always the ‘heat of the moment’ excuse and I am sure there was a lot of tension in the air but the way the British have attempted to pervert the course of justice for 38 years is despicable, Ted Heath should have had the balls to admit that the army were a disgrace on that day and that the best trained, most disciplined regiment the Brits could field lost control of the situation and 14 innocent lives were lost!

Oh and for your information, talking about inquiries against the IRA, the IRA did actually have a semi-independent inquiry branch which investigated IRA actions when they went wrong. Most of their work however was involved in bringing informers to justice. Gerry Adams then weakened that branch according to Ed Moloney.

It would have been preferable to having to do it after being backed into a corner by Lord Saville. I am also sure that doing that and admitting they did wrong would have won them a lot of respect with the republican movement indeed. The Brits just hate to admit that they have done wrong in their colonial oppression and related activities though!

I am well aware that the Provos (Provisional IRA) did commit some awful atrocities during the troubles, not least Bloody Friday which happened on the same year as Bloody Sunday. In that incident, for those not well informed on the Troubles 9 people were killed and over 100 injured, the vast majority innocent civilians (not British army personnel) and children also by a series of car bombs in Belfast. The IRA messed up by failing to phone in adequate warnings (which was their policy) and often just left 15 minutes for the army to get on the scene and evacuate the area, often people were evacuated to near another bomb! However 30 years afterwards, the IRA voluntarily published an apology acknowledging that they failed to warn people and were “deeply saddened” by the loss of life. Why did it take the Brits a £200m inquiry to make them say a similar thing?

I am totally in favour of finding out the truth in regard to all innocent deaths during the conflict whoever the perpetrators were however I just felt that people were trivialising Bloody Sunday too much. Just remember that for the families of those 14 men killed, yesterday was a monumental day.

For the record by the way, the fact that I support the Irish Republican cause 110% does not automatically mean I support the IRA 110%

It did not end well for me because I did get a bit too carried away.

Though please take into consideration that British involvement in Ireland is something I feel very passionately about, have read extensively about and I am very strongly against the continuing British occupation of 6 counties of Ireland. I promise I will try and keep to the topic and refrain from personal attacks, however do not expect me to be kind to the British army with regard to their appalling record in Ireland vis a vis civilians. We all have a different view, everyone else seems to be unconditionally siding with their beloved country whilst I see that crimes have been committed by the British and take a very different view of the situation.

I fail to see you point there Creaking Door!

I have no patriotism to any country involved in the 69-98 conflict. I am just on the side of truth and justice!

Clearly I am blinded by “misplaced” patriotism, then.

Anyone else?

You are supporting murderers, even the British now admit it. Defending those that took part in Bloody Sunday on the British side is like defending Derrik Bird to be honest similar amounts of innocent people died, 14 on Bloody Sunday and 12 killed by Derrik Bird.

kev35: Of course I regret all loss of innocent civilian life regardless of who the murderers were.

Blue_2: I suspect sadly you are right, that cursed agreement!!