was that forward, i knew there was something wrong because i found it difficult to breathe, because the bullet had collapsed my left long, and uh, the first one, i, i, i was able to reach out to to brian and i shook him, i said, brian, you okay, and there's no answer, and i, i said, he's have to get, he's been knocked out, you know, he's he's out for the count, so i crawled over to um, to towards fran and... and i won't say the state he was in, but you know uh, i was, i said to him, des is gone, and he'd be back soon, so and we can we'll all go home, and i crawled over to tony, and uh, tony like his, his injuries were bad, he had been, one of the bullets had gone through the back of his head, knocked out his eye onto his cheek, and it was uh, it was terrible and and and ' i

said to him, um, i remember asking him, did you break finger? i wouldn't, i just would not acknowledge uh, what i was, what i was seeing, and uh, that lasts for for maybe forever, for a long time that you your mind tell you not that this is not, you're in denial basically, and um, so i, i, i crawled as far as the ditch. and i pulled myself up, all i wanted to do was to to get some relief because i couldn't breathe properly, and i pulled myself up onto a little branch sort of it was hanging towards the field, and i leaned over that to see if i could get if i could catch my breath, but ... and then i'd stand up and i'd fall down again, and remember that it was almost like light show that was a the the the ditch was on fire, and every time you the the fire... crackle or

whatever you would light up something and and uh while i was crawling around there was uh there was body parts on the one of these unfortunate men his arm was was in the field and it was um it's it's it's surreal it's like a bad nightmares and you're telling you you're just ignoring that and uh eventually then um i heard walkie to this was after about an hour, i spent about an hour crawling around the field and telling the lads that you know - i said tony's fine, and i said to fran, brian is is - seems to be up for the count, but does it be back to with help? and heard these walkie talkies and was convinced that the man had come back to to finish off this thing. i heard somebody jump down into

the field and i said to myself, i'm going to stand up, i'm not going to die line down, so of i stood up and faced what i could hear coming towards me and shown a light on my face and i remember man saying, we're the police son, and uh, i went to walk towards him and the the ground was sort of um was on the even and i actually tripped. and he caught me, there was another was two police men, they caught me, they eventually got me inter the hospital and um, i remember being they were running down this carridor with me and all the lights flying past me and they put me up on on on on an operating table and and they were questioning me, there was men there questioning me and i don't whether there were doctors or police or whatever it was, but there were uh one of them said uh you know um... what happened to you? i said uh, i fell

through a ditch. that's the only explanation i gave him, i fell through a ditch, and he said, well, you've got some scratches and marks, he said, what are they? i said, well, the ditch, and uh, there was a this nurse came over and she had a scissors, and she, had a a blue jumper on me and a sort of a black jeans and uh, and she said, um, i'm going to... this now, i said, no, you're not, she said, i've got to cut this off, she had to say, i said, i just bought it last week, so i put my hands back, and they gave in and they they actually took it off me without cutting it, so i was happy enough with that, and the these people were pointing and the had a small uh wound on the right and a small wound on the left, and these were the entry and exit wounds, i just kept saying you, i felt through a ditch and the i remember the

one man said um uh what were you doing up here? they obviously heard my accent which isn't isn't northern accent said what are you doing up here and i said i was playing you, i had no idea that they didn't know who we were, you know, because we go into a shop, everybody knows who you are, you know, um, and uh, i said, i was playing, and - he said, i already, he said, playing at what, so eventually uh, i said playing music, and um, i think they... started to realize this is band, next thing all of these machines started to come down, i think it was x-rays or something like that and all the banging and thenies from these and next thing i woke up - hours hours later, eight or nine hours later and - it's just my wife was just

standing there, she had been dead, billy and marie brought her up and when they arrived at daisy hill hospital um um "there was a lot of security, there's a lot of commotion outside daisy hill and uh and billy went straight over to the the security man with he had a like a clipboard and billy said we're here to see stephen travers and uh and ann was there she i mean you think about she was like she was only 21 you know 20 22 21 22 and uh and uh he said uh travis travers he looked on the clip book he's dead and billy said, "no, check it again." he said, "we're told he's that he's he's uh that he's he's okay." and he said, "oh, my mistake, he's in theater." and um, so eight or nine hours, but i have to say, uh, disney hill hospital within 24

hours, 48 hours of the whole thing happening, gave me back my my faith in mankind to just amazing people, amazing people. steve. an extraordinary story and no matter how many times i hear it, that's just um, it stays with me, i mean it's took you many years, well we are interrupting our regular programming to bring you the ambassador of iran in damascus, let's take a listen, but but we are waiting for the rebeble to be taken away, for the bodies to be taken out, they know that iran has always given a proper response which is proportionate to the crime that they have committed, the response will be really decisive and proportionate to the

crime and it will happen in due time and in the right situation آقای سفیر جمهوری اسلامی ایران در سوریه بودیم. interview to ambassador, once again inter giving an the iranian national television, discussing in detail that iran will be giving decisive response. to this attack by the israeli regime on the counsulat of iran in damascus uh raising the building to the ground and of course this will be in his words proportionate, the response will be proportionate to the israeli attack. now iran

has shown in the past that it is quite wise and strategic when it comes to uh giving responses to israeli attacks and none of these is... attacks so far have been left unanswered, but what exactly that response would entil is something we're going to have to wait and see, what we do know is that based on iran's previous responses, it will be a strategic and calculated move. we'll be bringing you more details in our news bulletin in less than half an hour. all those years up until 2016 until we uh number. got together and eugene reeve, whose three brothers were murdered on the 4th of january 1976, and joe campel, whose father was murdered in kushindall, actually by the same, the same man was involved, the jackel, the jackel robin, jack, jackson, um, who is a,

killer for hire, and he's working working both with the special branch and with mi5, um, we got together - there was an event in in the uk was run by michael oher whose little sister magella oher was murdered uh in in 76 and i think it was august 76. "and it it was bringing people together from both communities who had been uh had been impacted by the troubles uh one of the other speakers on that particular event his his wife had been killed in the shankel road bombing and um there was there was four of us uh talking about our experiences because it's important to to talk about these things so that people understand you know the futility and the failure of violence" and uh we decided that the event that was alla mcbr was the the man's name whose wife sharen was was murdered

in on shenkel road warming but um when when we began to realize you know there's more uh it's more it's about other people as well as me you know it's it's so i had been focusing for all of these years on myself and my own story and then i started to hear other people's stories i thought you know well it's important that that that society understands what happened, because you have to understand the past, it's like, people often say, well, let's move on, but if you go down to to do your driving test a, you know, and you turn up without a rearview mirror, you'll fail the test, you have to know where what's behind you before you can, you can navigate safely into the future, so it's important uh, that that we know, so we started to to understand other people's stories. "first of all, i wasn't alone in this, i wasn't, this was, this was a journey that we all had to had to

make and to come to terms with and to understand, you can't, you can't excuse the things that happened, but i began to look at the word, the big word for me now is context, you know, why people do certain things, i believe that the people who who were there on the night and even those with the you know screaming and showt in the obsernities, but they actually you know the products of of of of..." uh the times that were in the also products of of of of the society that they grew up with, and if you're bounced on your knee by your grandfather and tell you to hate the person who lives across the road because they say different prayers to the same god, you're going to believe that, you know, and and and this fear and all of these things, it's not excusing these things, but um, so the the journey, the reconciliation journey started off with using the word reconciliation, and then we... notice that words like reconciliation meant different things to different people, to people down in

the south who unfortunately know little or nothing about what happened in the north, they think reconciliation is let's build you know a big expensive peace bridge in the north and we get both factions uh tell them behave themselves meet in the middle and hug each other, that's not, that's not going to happen, that's not, it's not feasable, it wouldn't happen anywhere, so i began to understand the whole thing so uh and more and more it just there was two things that just came to the for me was the first of all education, education is to understand what happened, why it happened, it's not, it's not enough to understand what happened, it's always asked the question, why did it happen, and um um terrible things, once once once the killing starts and once once somebody on either side or and it wasn't just two sides. because it was orchestrated by - tommy sans

the great singer songwriter said to me one time um tommy has a beautiful song i would call there were roses it's about two two young friends catholic and protestant and we're up in his house in ros travel one time and there was lots of guitars and everything around this is not too long ago and i said to tommy sing there were roses and he sang it and it brought it back you know the the because we were mixed band and and i remember saying to tommy, god tommy, there's terrible things done by by both sides during the conflict, and tommy's a wise, wise old man, he said, um, i say old, he won't like that, but he said, um, oh, he said terrible things indeed, he said, but there was a terrible thing there in the first place to make it happen, and in my new book, i actually finish with that sentence, because there was an unjust, it was an unjust society, it was it was injustice there, and uh, but as i say,

when you know when when when either side starts to kill the innocent and murder the innocent, whether it's you know, whether it's the miami or claudy or or whether it's you know and skillen or the or or or the revies or the odouds or anything, you can go on forever with these things, but we have to say, we have to call it out and say, murdering people is wrong. "and it it, but we can't say, well, i'm going to blame you for this, now i'm going to, you know, i'm never going to have anything to do with you, unless this dialogue here, we have to, you, we have to uh..." "dialogue is really, really important, we wouldn't have had the good friday agreement with without dialogue, and our organization tarp true, you can see it on tarp.ie, but it's it's it was very, very successful in so far as is bringing people, letting them tell their stories, but there's a danger in that as well, that it becomes very sophisticated sort of very sophist

sophisticated what aboutary exercise, and you're inclined" to want to balance the books, well if somebody here who is suffered from one com in one community, because neither community has a monopoly on suffering or loss, but you get somebody, you say, well, oh, we've no, we've heard the story of this person, we better get somebody from the other side and hear that story, so we, and that doesn't work, and it's something that you know, in the years since we formed ter, but trying to balance the books is is not healthy, somebody who is impacted. by one side or the other is entitled to stand up and tell their story on their own and they should be able to tell their story on their own just as i'm doing here now and they shouldn't have to have somebody from the other side to tell their story to balance it out um and the people on the other side should also be able to tell their story without having to having to because what happens is you get this you

get this phenomenon where when you hear these stories uh and you're trying to balance the books people who are are you know especially in the south or in the uk or wherever say ah one was as bad as another you know they're all the same they're all attitude they should have got a bit of sense and it wasn't like that it's it's context and every single killing every single thing has has its own context it didn't rely on something else and you can't say i was justified to kill somebody because somebody killed my neighbor it isn't like that so we have to hear individual stories "the other thing then is that that you know as i say cliches become this sort of firewall for us, we say you talk about uh what happened on bloody sunday, but we don't mention the names of the people, you talk about dublin uh bombings or the dublin monument, we don't mention the people, they become a cliche, we talk about omar, rennis, gillen, there are some people, you'll never

forget gordon wilson's voice, but then again at the same the vast majority of the people who were..." 'who who died during the troubles, they become they become uh cliches rather than actual in individuals, because it was inconvenience for people to have to say these were real human beings, but we do have to know the stories, because the alternative it is um is uh, if you know violence, as i say, it doesn't work, you can see it's not working anywhere in the world, and you know there's always it'll go on for hundred years and another hundred years and it'l still never stop so'. uh, hopefully the message comes across that the only reason i'm telling these, the telling this story are are are talking about the actual horror of it, it's sous that people will say, i don't want that for my kids. steve, it's always great to have you in belfast, and i want you to do one last thing before we finish, you said you had new book, do you want to plug the new book? i

thought, thank god for that, i thought you're going to ask me to sing a song, i never a sing. um or play the guitar. um, yeah, we have have new book, the uh, the book we we brought out in 2007 was called obviously the miami show band massaker survivor search for the truth, um, and that led to the netflix documentary uh, so it was brought the story to a global audience, like your films on, you mean there's nothing better to you, than to get people into a theater or showed on television. "this new book is actually called the base player and the nature of base player, somebody sort of stands back, at least in my in my case, the vast majority of basepers like to stand back and uh lay down a groove and and work with the drammer and not be the one that has to get out there and and and and and front the band and smile and jump around the place and all that, we were the

the ones that stayed back, so in that context i i i hope that you know..." "i'm i'm able to maybe talk about the things that i've seen, talk about the things that were in front of me. uh, anybody could write a book about the miami chopan massager at this time, but how, how it, how, how it changes your life, how it makes you different from the person that i began at 24, complacent, arrogant, somebody - you know, who who couldn't care less about what was happening in the north, uh, um, to somebody who cares passionately, now." about about um about what happens to our people all - on this island and and on these islands, but it was learning corve and it's it's taken me next year will be the... would be the 50th anniversary and it's taken me this long to realize that every single incident, my uh, my experience, everybody's experience, whether

it's you know all of these well-known atrocities or whether it's the ones that people never get an opportunity to speak about, you know, they're all connected, we're all connected, and together, i think there's no better antidote to uh to - violence, no better deterrent. to uh um any of these evils that brought brought all of all of those deaths about than the voice of the victim, i think the voice of the victim is very very important and there are so i'll i'll never forget listening one morning i was listening to uh i think it was the nolan show we don't get that down s but i live in cark now but i could hear somebody rang me said turn on the internet and you can hear the this there's a discussion on about the the troubles and there was this lady and she came on and she apparently she had been on the day before and she had been talking about her husband who was killed 40 or 50 years prior to that and i

hadn't heard that particular conversation but she unusually she was back on the following day and she came back to say thanks very much to the presenter uh for having her on and she said the reason i want to thank you for having me on yesterday she said because before i was on your program yesterday, i was nobody and my husband was nobody, but since i spoke on the program, she said, i am somebody and my husband is somebody, and i felt guilty because i mean, ours is very high profile case, and the rock and roll element in our thing, you know, actually gets the attention of people, generations in the future, all because there's always this this uh rock and roll revevel type of connection that you you know young. people have, so we have that advantage, but i remember feeling very guilty listening to that lady and thinking to myself, i'm taking it for granted that that our story is well known, so whenever i speak

about about these things now, i also like to remind people that, i'm i'm only one of over three and a half thous people, you know, when it came to to to people who were killed, but there was 44, 45 thousand people injured in that. so if by telling my story uh, if if that makes somebody stop and think, there's a better way to do this, there's a better, let's let's talk about it is not going to be easy, so the difference, the journey that i've had from being this uh, you know, couldn't care less about what was happening, just up the road from us to to where i am now, i'm a slow learner, but at least think i think it's important, my journey is important, so the b player is that journey, it's the story, the the new book which will be out at the end of this year, it's a story the journey and the arc of the journey and

where and and and how i got here, so i hope i hope hope that'll be my legacy in at this particular book, well we all be looking forward to to reading that, steve, once again want to thank you for coming to belfast, always good to have you here, it's always great to be in belfast, thank you. and that does it for another week, we'd like for you to join the conversation by sharing the link to today's program to help us grow our audience across all our social media platforms. and once again like to thank our special guest steve travers, and the meantime, the conversation, we'll be back next week with more investigations and analysis. i'm sean murray, bye for now. ramadan in iran where ancient traditions

blend with modern celebrations to create a truly unforgettable spiritual journey where everything comes alive with the spirit of the holy month, a unique experience like other. these and more on this edition. of iran today. this week on expose, benjamin netanyahu vows to reject any calls to help the rafah invasion as he and joe biden intensified their staged public spat over zionist israel's genicide in gaza. now following the statement made by former president donald trump that there would be a blood. bath: if he is not elected in november, left this politicians and media personalities completely lose it on social media, and lastly, a recent politico ipso survey reveals that 50% of american think

trump is guilty and ought to be tried before the 2024 presidential election. stay tuned for expose. the truth is just the revelation away.

the headline: sirsulat building in syria's capital damascus comes under attack. several people have been confirmed dead, including the commander of iran's irgc corps in syria. iran and call for an international investigation of crimes committed in gaza's al shafa hospital that was under iof attack for two weeks and the islamic resistance in iraq says it has staged fresh attacks on israeli targets and the port city of eliated response to the regime's genocide in gaza.