This is the first photograph of the paratrooper who admitted shooting dead four civil rights protestors on Bloody Sunday — taken within two hours of the killings.

Soldier F — who told the Saville Inquiry that he shot Michael Kelly, Paddy Doherty, Barney McGuigan and a fourth man, believed to be William McKinney — was pictured at the Fort George base on Londonderry’s Strand Road.

He posed for an “arrest” picture after the paras scooped 30 civil rights marchers in the aftermath of the killings and took them back to barracks, where they alleged he brutalised and spat at them.

Giving evidence anonymously in 2003, Soldier F, who said he fired 13 rounds, said: “There was gunmen and bombers killed” — a claim rejected by the inquiry on publication last week.

He admitted killing Barney McGuigan, shot through the head as he waved a handkerchief on his way to aid dying Paddy Doherty.

Soldier F, who joined the Parachute Regiment in 1966 and left the Army in 1988, now lives outside the UK and is said to be suffering from ill-health.

He may face possible prosecution for murder and lying under oath after Lord Saville accused a number of soldiers of putting forward “knowingly false accounts”.