Thirty-eight years after the atrocity on the streets of Derry the families of those murdered and those wounded on the day may finally get what they have been seeking for almost four decades - official recognition of the innocence of their loved ones and the guilt of their killers.

There will be vast amounts of fascinating detail in the Saville report and it will no doubt shed much light on hitherto unestablished elements of the day.

What we do not need the Law Lord to tell us is that Gerald Donaghy, Gerald McKinney, William McKinney, James Wray, William Nash, Michael McDaid, Michael Kelly, John Young, Kevin McElhinney, Hugh Gilmour, Barney McGuigan, Patrick Doherty, Jackie Duddy and John Johnston were deliberately and unlawfully killed by the paras.

All of them were unarmed and six of them were only 17 years old.

This, at the very least, suggests that there was a specific policy of targeting people within a certain age bracket.

There were 10,000 people on that march and yet all of those shot were male and almost half were teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them.

To suggest this was coincidental is preposterous.

The inquiry heard testimony from a whistle-blowing former para, known by the cipher Soldier 027, that the shock troops of the Parachute Regiment were told to get "some kills."

There can only be one acceptable conclusion from the Saville report.

Anything else would further perpetuate the travesty of justice and compound the pain of the families and the wounded who have displayed such dignity in the face of almost overwhelming adversity.

Last Thursday also saw the last substantive day of evidence at another inquiry - that into the murder, again by British troops, of 26-year-old Basra hotelier Baha Mousa.

Mousa was kicked and beaten to death with a sack over his head in a filthy toilet at the British detention centre in Iraq.

Half a world and nigh on 40 years apart, these atrocities bear more similarities than the state and the armed forces would wish to admit.

This is not taking into account various other massacres committed in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The palpable truth of the matter is that the British army does not contain a few bad apples - it is rotten root and branch.

Both Bloody Sunday and the savage killing of Mousa were war crimes, pure and simple and the blame does not rest with those who pulled the triggers or punched, kicked and gouged alone.

The mainstream media still spinelessly refer to the "alleged" beating to death of Mousa by British troops.

Yeah, because of course anyone can just wander into a high-security British military detention facility and give someone a kicking.

Mousa is dead.

He was alive when he went into the BG main facility.

Some 36 hours later his battered and almost unrecognisable body was carried out.

It doesn't take Slipper of the Yard to work out what happened and what will continue to happen if trained killers are used in a policing role.

You wouldn't let the Met or the RUC invade Afghanistan, however much they might be up for it.

This is not so much a iron fist in a velvet glove, it's a sodding big club with nails in it.