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Death of Brian Keenan, Member of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA

Brian Keenan, a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on May 21, 2008, at Cullyhanna, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, following a battle with colorectal cancer. He receives an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions and plays a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The son of a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Keenan is born on July 17, 1941, in Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, before his family moves to Belfast. As a teenager, he moves to England to find work, for a time working as a television repairman in partnership with his brother in Corby, Northamptonshire. During this time, he comes to the attention of the police when he damages a cigarette machine, which leads to police having his fingerprints on file. He returns to Northern Ireland when the Troubles begin and starts working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquires a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.

Despite his family having no history of republicanism, Keenan joins the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1970 or 1971, and by August 1971 is the quartermaster of the Belfast Brigade. He is an active IRA member, planning bombings in Belfast and travelling abroad to make political contacts and arrange arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. In 1972, he travels to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government. In early 1973 he takes over responsibility for control of the IRA’s bombing campaign in England and also becomes IRA Quartermaster General. In late 1973, he is the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.

In early 1974, Keenan plans to break Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell out of Long Kesh using a helicopter, in a method similar to Seamus Twomey‘s escape from Mountjoy Prison in October 1973, but the plan is vetoed by Billy McKee. He is arrested in the Republic of Ireland in mid-1974 and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for IRA membership. On March 17, 1975, he is shot and wounded while attempting to lead a mass escape from Portlaoise Prison. While being held in Long Kesh, Gerry Adams helps to devise a blueprint for the reorganisation of the IRA, which includes the use of covert cells and the establishment of a Southern Command and Northern Command. As the architects of the blueprint, Adams, Bell and Brendan Hughes, are still imprisoned, Martin McGuinness and Keenan tour the country trying to convince the IRA Army Council and middle leadership of the benefits of the restructuring plan, with one IRA member remarking “Keenan was a roving ambassador for Adams.” The proposal is accepted after Keenan wins support from the South Derry Brigade, East Tyrone Brigade and South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying, “Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams’ Christ.”

In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London are arrested following the six-day Balcombe Street siege. The IRA unit had been active in England since late 1974 carrying out a series of bombings, and a few months after his release from prison Keenan visits the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions. In follow-up raids after the siege, police discover crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

Garda Síochána informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that Keenan recommended IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey to authorise an attack on Ulster Protestants in retaliation to an increase in sectarian attacks on Catholic civilians by Protestant loyalist paramilitaries, such as the killing of three Catholics in a gun and bomb attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh on December 19, 1975. According to O’Callaghan “Keenan believed that the only way, in his words, to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants] was to just hit back much harder and more savagely than them.” Soon after the sectarian Kingsmill massacre occurs, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work are ordered out of a minibus they are travelling in and executed en masse with a machine gun on January 5, 1976.

Keenan is arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near Banbridge on March 20, 1979, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stopped two cars travelling north on the main road from Dublin to Belfast and is extradited to England to face charges relating to the Balcombe Street Gang‘s campaign in England. His capture is a blow to the IRA, in particular as he was carrying an address book listing his contacts including Palestinian activists in the United Kingdom. The IRA responds by dispatching Bobby Storey and three other members to break Keenan out of prison using a helicopter, but all four are arrested and remanded to Brixton Prison. Keenan stands trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 defended by Michael Mansfield and is accused of organising the IRA’s bombings in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter and Gordon Hamilton Fairley. He is sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on June 25, 1980.

Keenan continues to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams is granted permission by the IRA’s Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, having been refused permission at a meeting the previous month. In a letter sent from Leicester Prison, Keenan writes that he “emphatically” supports the move and endorses the Army Council’s decision.

Keenan is released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 is one of seven members of the IRA’s Army Council. Following the events after the IRA’s ceasefire of August 1994, he is openly critical of Gerry Adams and the “tactical use of armed struggle,” or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement. After the Northern Ireland peace process becomes deadlocked over the issue of the IRA decommissiong its arms, he and the other members of the Army Council authorise the Docklands bombing which kills two people and marks the end of the IRA’s eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.

Keenan outlines the IRA’s public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he states, “The IRA will not be defeated…Republicans will have our victory…Do not be confused about decommissioning. The only thing the Republican movement will accept is the decommissioning of the British state in this country.” In the same speech he accuses the British of “double-dealing” and denounces the Irish government as “spineless.”

On February 25, 2001, Keenan addresses a republican rally in Creggan, County Armagh, saying that republicans should not fear “this phase” of “the revolution” collapsing should the Good Friday Agreement fail. He confirms his continued commitment to the Armalite and ballot box strategy, saying that both political negotiations and violence are “legitimate forms of revolution” and that both “have to be prosecuted to the utmost.” He goes on to say, “The revolution can never be over until we have British imperialism where it belongs—in the dustbin of history,” a message aimed at preventing rank-and-file IRA activists defecting to the dissident Real IRA.

Keenan plays a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA’s go-between with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Gerry Adams remarks, “There wouldn’t be a peace process if it wasn’t for Brian Keenan.” Keenan resigns from his position on the Army Council in 2005 due to ill-health, and is replaced by Bernard Fox, who had taken part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. On May 6, 2007, he is guest speaker at a rally in Cappagh, County Tyrone, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the so-called “Loughgall Martyrs,” eight members of the IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987.

In July 2002, Keenan is diagnosed as suffering from terminal colorectal cancer. It is alleged by the Irish Independent and The Daily Telegraph that Keenan succeeded Thomas “Slab” Murphy as Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA at some point between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s before he relinquished the role to deal with his poor health caused by cancer.

Keenan’s last years are spent living with his wife in Cullyhanna, County Armagh, where he dies of cancer on May 21, 2008. He is an atheist and receives a secular funeral, representing a major republican show of strength.


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Birth of Irish Republican Thomas “Slab” Murphy

Thomas Murphy, Irish republican also known as “Slab” and believed to be a former Chief of Staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, is born on August 26, 1949. His farm straddles County Armagh and County Louth on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. One of three brothers, he is a lifelong bachelor who lives on the Louth side of his farm prior to his imprisonment in February 2016 following a tax evasion conviction.

Murphy is allegedly involved with the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA before being elected Chief of Staff by the IRA Army Council. Toby Harnden, ex-correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, names him as planning the Warrenpoint ambush of 1979, in which 18 British soldiers are killed. He is also allegedly implicated in the Mullaghmore bombing the same day, which kills four people, including two children and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. He is involved in smuggling huge stockpiles of weapons from Libya in the 1980s and is a member of the Army Council that decides to end its first ceasefire with the 1996 Docklands bombing in London that kills two men.

Accused by The Sunday Times of directing an IRA bombing campaign in Britain, in 1987 Murphy unsuccessfully sues the paper for libel in Dublin. The original verdict is overturned by the court of appeal because of omissions in the judge’s summing up and there is a retrial, which he also loses. At the retrial, both Sean O’Callaghan and Eamon Collins, former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, testify against Murphy, as do members of the Gardaí, Irish customs officials, British Army and local TD Brendan McGahon. Collins, who had also written a book about his experiences, Killing Rage, is beaten and killed by having a spike driven through his face near his home in Newry eight months later. In 1998, a Dublin court dismisses Murphy’s case after a high-profile trial, during which Murphy states that he has “never been a member of the IRA, no way” and claims not to know where the Maze prison is located. The jury rules, however, that he is an IRA commander and a smuggler.

The Sunday Times subsequently publishes statements given by Adrian Hopkins, the skipper who ferries weapons from Libya to the IRA, to the French authorities who intercept the fifth and final Eksund shipment. Hopkins details how Murphy met a named Libyan agent in Greece, paid for the weapons to be imported, and helped unload them when they arrived in Ireland. According to A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney, Murphy has been the IRA Army Council’s chief of staff since 1997. Toby Harnden’s Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh also details Murphy’s IRA involvement.

On September 20, 2016, the BBC‘s Spotlight airs a programme in which an alleged British spy who had infiltrated the IRA claims that in 2006, Murphy had demanded the killing of Denis Donaldson, an IRA member and British informer, in order to maintain discipline. The BBC says it had tried to contact Murphy but had received no reply. He has yet to respond to the allegation. On September 23, 2016, the Donaldson family’s solicitor says that the allegation is “absolute nonsense.”

In October 2005, officers of the British Assets Recovery Agency and the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau carry out raids on a number of businesses in Manchester and Dundalk. It is extensively reported in the media that the investigation is aimed at damaging the suspected multi-million-pound empire of Murphy, who according to the BBC’s Underworld Rich List, has accumulated up to £40 million through smuggling oil, cigarettes, grain and pigs, as well as through silent or partial ownership in legitimate businesses and in property.

A large, purpose-built underground chamber that Gardaí believes the IRA used for interrogation is discovered close to Murphy’s home.

In his first-ever press release, issued on October 12, 2005, Murphy denies he owned any property and denies that he had any links with co-accused Cheshire businessman Dermot Craven. Furthermore, he claims that he had to sell property to cover his legal fees after his failed libel case against The Sunday Times, and that he made a living from farming.

On March 9, 2006, police, soldiers and customs officials from both sides of the Irish border launch a large dawn raid on Murphy’s house and several other buildings in the border region. Three persons are arrested by the Gardaí but are released three days later. A fleet of tankers, computers, documents, two shotguns, more than 30,000 cigarettes and the equivalent of 800,000 euros in sterling bank notes, euro bank notes and cheques are seized. Four diesel laundering facilities attached to a major network of storage tanks, some of which are underground, are also found. The Irish Criminal Assets Bureau later obtains seizure orders to take possession of euro cash and cheques and sterling cash and cheques, together worth around one million Euros.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams makes a public statement in support of Murphy following the March 2006 raids. Under political and media pressure over allegations of the IRA’s continued presence in South Armagh, Adams says, “Tom Murphy is not a criminal. He’s a good republican and I read his statement after the Manchester raids, and I believe what he says and also and very importantly he is a key supporter of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy and has been for a very long time.” He adds, “I want to deal with what is an effort to portray Tom Murphy as a criminal, as a bandit, as a gang boss, as someone who is exploiting the republican struggle for his own ends, as a multimillionaire. There is no evidence to support any of that.”

Commenting in Armagh on Murphy’s imprisonment for tax fraud, Arlene Foster, First Minister of Northern Ireland says, “Whilst some people refer to Murphy as a ‘good republican’ the people of this area know him to be a criminal.”

Murphy is arrested in Dundalk, County Louth, on November 7, 2007, by detectives from the Criminal Assets Bureau, on charges relating to alleged revenue offences. The following day, he is charged with tax evasion under the Tax Consolidation Act. He is later released on his own bail of €20,000 with an independent surety of €50,000.

On October 17, 2008, in an agreed legal settlement, Murphy and his brothers pay over £1 million in assets and cash to the authorities in Britain and the Republic in settlement of a global crime and fraud investigation relating to proceeds of crime associated with smuggling and money laundering. After an investigation involving the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, more than 625,000 euros (£487, 000) in cash and cheques is confiscated by the Republic’s courts, while nine properties in North West England worth £445,000 are confiscated by British courts. Murphy is still fighting a claim in the Republic’s courts for tax evasion, relating to non-completion of tax returns for eight years from 1996. On April 26, 2010, he is further remanded on bail.

In 2011, there are claims that Murphy had become disillusioned with the Northern Ireland peace process and that he had fallen out with Sinn Féin. However, there is no evidence to support he is sympathetic to any dissident republican groups. In March 2013, the Garda and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), along with members of the Irish Customs Authority and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), raid his farm on the Louth-Armagh border. The Sunday World reports that two hours prior to the raid, at approximately 4:00 a.m., fire is seen coming from Murphy’s yard. There are serious concerns within the Garda and PSNI that a mole may have tipped off Murphy about the raid hours earlier as laptops, computer disks and a large amount of documentation is destroyed in the fires. As a result, an internal Garda investigation takes place.

On December 17, 2015, Murphy is found guilty on nine charges of tax evasion by a three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court trial sitting in Dublin, lasting nine weeks. He is tried under anti-terrorist legislation due to the belief by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) that there would not be a fair trial because of the potential of the intimidation of prosecution witnesses and jurors, and the security surrounding the trial.

Murphy is found guilty on all charges of failing to furnish tax returns on his income as a “cattle farmer” between 1996 and 2004. He is prosecuted following a 14-year-long Criminal Assets Bureau investigation, which during a raid of his property uncovers bags with more than €250,000 and more than £111,000 sterling in cash, along with documents, diaries and ledgers. He is remanded on bail until early 2016 for sentencing.

On February 26, 2016, Murphy is sentenced to 18 months in prison. None of the jail term is suspended. Following sentencing, he is immediately transferred from court to Ireland’s highest-security prison, Portlaoise Prison, reserved for terrorists, dissident republicans and serious gangland criminals, under a heavily armed Garda and Irish Army escort due to security concerns.

Murphy appeals the conviction in November 2016. His lawyer, John Kearney, claims that the tax Murphy had not paid had in fact been paid by his brother, Patrick. The Court of Appeal dismisses the appeal on all grounds in January 2017.

In January 2017, and scheduled for release in April 2018, Murphy is moved from Midlands Prison in Portlaoise to the Loughan House low-security prison in County Cavan.


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George Mitchell begins Northern Ireland Talks with Sinn Féin

george-mitchell-in-belfast

On June 10, 1996, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell begins Northern Ireland talks with Sinn Féin, who are blocked by the lack of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire from what are supposed to be all-party talks on Northern Ireland’s future.

Pressure is coming from all sides on the Irish Republican Army to give peace a chance in Northern Ireland. Governments in London, Dublin, and Washington, D.C., as well as the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens, are calling on the paramilitary group to call a new ceasefire. Even Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, appeals to the IRA to reconsider its refusal to renew the ceasefire it broke in February with a bomb blast in London.

An opinion poll in the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune shows 97 percent of people, including 84 percent of Sinn Féin voters, want the IRA to renew its ceasefire.

The talks aim to reconcile two main political traditions in Northern Ireland, Protestant-backed unionism, which wants the province to stay part of the United Kingdom, and Catholic-backed Irish nationalism, which seeks to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.

Earlier in the year Senator Mitchell reported to the British government on the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland and drew up six principles which, if fulfilled by all the parties, would produce a lasting political settlement.

As internal and international pressure on the IRA mounts, politicians from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), a moderate party representing the province’s Protestants, shows signs of drifting apart on whether Sinn Féin should be allowed to participate. Even if the IRA announces “a ceasefire of convenience,” Sinn Féin should be barred from attending, says Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the radical Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Furthermore, the choice of Mitchell to head the talks makes some Protestants uneasy. Earlier, DUP leader Ian Paisley says Mitchell could not be trusted as chairman. “He is carrying too much American Irish baggage.”

Yet David Trimble, leader of the larger UUP, says a new IRA ceasefire might “get Sinn Féin to the door.” To be fully admitted to the all-party talks, however, its leadership will have to “commit itself to peace and democracy.” Trimble adds that he has doubts about Mitchell’s objectivity and had sought “certain assurances” before finally agreeing to lead a UUP delegation to the opening round. Mitchell, at an impromptu news conference in Belfast, says he plans to show “fairness and impartiality.”

The attitudes of the two unionist parties appear to reflect concern that the IRA would declare a ceasefire before the talks open, or during the early stages, technically clearing the way for Sinn Féin participation. David Wilshire, a senior Conservative member of Britain’s Parliament, who supports the unionist cause, says that a ceasefire by the IRA now would be a “cynical ploy.” He adds that “the government should not fall for it.”

Sinn Féin leaders, meanwhile, meet on Saturday, June 8, and announced that regardless of the IRA’s intentions, Adams and other Sinn Féin leaders will turn up at the opening session and demand to be admitted. They cite the party’s strong showing at special elections in May to the peace forum at which they obtain 15 percent of the vote and win a strong mandate from Catholic voters in West Belfast.

It is “the British government’s responsibility” to urge the IRA to renew its truce, says Martin McGuinness, Adams’s deputy. Yet Adams himself makes a direct approach to the IRA. This is confirmed by Albert Reynolds, the former Irish Taoiseach. He says that Adams has advised him that he is about to make a new ceasefire appeal to the IRA leadership. “I am now satisfied Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin will seek an early reinstatement of the ceasefire which, of course, has not broken down in Northern Ireland. I see a set of similar elements to those in 1994, which brought about the ceasefire, now coming together. Everyone must now compromise,” Reynolds says.

On June 8, the IRA tells the British Broadcasting Corporation that its military council has called a meeting to examine the agenda for the Northern Ireland talks.

(From:”Hopes for N. Ireland Talks Rely on Squeezing the IRA” by Alexander MacLeod, The Christian Science Monitor, June 10, 1996)


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The 1996 Manchester Bombing

manchester-bombing-1996

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful 3,300-pound truck bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of Manchester, England, at 11:17 AM on June 15, 1996. The biggest bomb detonated in Great Britain since World War II, it targets the city’s infrastructure and economy and causes widespread damage, estimated by insurers at £700 million.

The IRA sends telephone warnings about 90 minutes before the bomb is detonated. The area is evacuated but the bomb squad, using a remote-controlled device, is unable to defuse the bomb in time. More than 200 people are injured, but there are no fatalities. At the time, England is hosting the UEFA Euro ’96 football championships and a match between Russia and Germany is to take place in Manchester the following day.

The Marks & Spencer store, the sky bridge connecting it with the Arndale Centre, and neighbouring buildings are destroyed. The blast creates a mushroom cloud which rises 1,000 feet into the sky. Glass and masonry are thrown into the air and people are showered by falling debris behind the police cordon a half mile away. A search of the area for casualties is confused by mannequins blasted from shop windows, which are sometimes mistaken for bodies.

Since 1970 the Provisional IRA has been waging a campaign aimed at forcing the British government to negotiate a withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Although Manchester has been the target of IRA bombs before 1996, it has not been subjected to an attack of this scale. The IRA had ended its seventeen-month ceasefire in February 1996 with a similarly large truck bomb attack on the London Docklands.

The bombing is condemned by John Major‘s government, the opposition, and by individual members of parliament (MPs) as a “sickening”, “callous,” and “barbaric” terrorist attack. Early on, Major states that, “This explosion looks like the work of the IRA. It is the work of a few fanatics and…causes absolute revulsion in Ireland as it does here.” Sinn Féin is criticised by Taoiseach John Bruton for being “struck mute” on the issue in the immediate aftermath. The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, states he is “deeply outraged by the bomb explosion” and joins Bruton and Major in “utterly condemning this brutal and cowardly act of terrorism.” On June 20, 1996, the IRA claims responsibility for the bombing and states that it “sincerely regretted” causing injury to civilians.

Several buildings near the explosion are damaged beyond repair and have to be demolished, while many more are closed for months for structural repairs. Most of the rebuilding work is completed by the end of 1999, at a cost of £1.2 billion, although redevelopment continues until 2005. The perpetrators of the attack have not been caught and Greater Manchester Police concede it is unlikely that anyone will ever be charged in connection with the bombing.