Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA has carried out many improvised land mine and roadside bomb attacks on British forces in the region. In September 1972, three British soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is blown up by an IRA land mine at Sanaghanroe, near Dungannon. In March 1974, two IRA members are killed on the Aughnacloy Road near Dungannon when a land mine they are planting explodes prematurely.
The Dungannon attack occurs just months after the Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, where the IRA kills eighteen British soldiers with roadside bombs in south County Down — the deadliest single attack on British forces during The Troubles.
On December 16, 1979, two armoured British Army Land Rovers are driving along Ballygawley Road, about two miles outside Dungannon. A unit of the IRA had planted a 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) improvised land mine in a culvert under the road at Glenadush. When the second vehicle reaches the culvert, the land mine is detonated by remote control from a concealed location, showcasing their evolving tactics in guerrilla warfare and ambush strategy. The blast is powerful enough to launch the armoured Land Rover into the air and killing four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Artillery outright: William Beck (23), Keith Richards (22), Simon Evans (19), and Allan Ayrton (23).
The Irish Times reports that “This stretch of road has been a favourite ambush spot for successive generations of IRA men since the 1920s.” The Provisional IRA has been attacking British Army patrols and convoys with roadside bombs regularly since the beginning of the Troubles in the early 1970s. Most of these attacks take place in rural parts of Northern Ireland, especially eastern and southern County Tyrone (where the IRA’s Tyrone Brigade is active) and southern County Armagh (heartland of the South Armagh Brigade). In August 1979, the IRA ambushes a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs near Warrenpoint, killing eighteen soldiers. This is the deadliest attack on the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In December 1979, four more British soldiers are killed on Ballygawley Road in the Dungannon land mine attack. In May 1981, five British soldiers are killed when their Saracen APC is ripped apart by a roadside bomb at Altnaveigh, County Armagh. In July 1983, four Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers are killed when their vehicle strikes an IRA land mine near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. In December 1985, the Tyrone IRA launches an assault on the police barracks in Ballygawley, shooting dead two officers and destroying the barracks with a bomb.
On the night of August 19/20, 1988, an unmarked 52-seater bus is transporting 36 soldiers of The Light Infantry from Aldergrove Flying Station to a military base near Omagh. The soldiers, who came from England, have just finished 18 months of a two-year tour of duty in Northern Ireland and are returning to the base after a short holiday.
As it is driving along the main road from Ballygawley to Omagh, at about 12:30 a.m., IRA members remotely detonate a roadside bomb containing 200 pounds (91 kg) of Semtex. According to police, the bomb had been planted in a vehicle by the roadside and had been detonated by command wire from 330 yards (300 m) away. A statement by one of the survivors claims instead that the roadside bomb was made of “two fertilizer bags filled with Semtex.” The blast hurls the bus 30 metres down the road and throws the soldiers into neighbouring hedges and fields. It leaves a crater 6 feet deep and scatters body parts and twisted metal over a wide area. Witnesses describe finding dead, dying and wounded soldiers strewn on the road and caught in the wreckage of the bus. Others are walking around “stunned.” Some of the first to arrive on the scene and offer help are loyalist bandsmen of the Omagh Protestant Boy’s Band returning from a parade in Portadown, who have also been traveling in buses.
Eight of the soldiers are killed and the remaining 28 are wounded. The soldiers killed are: Jayson Burfitt (aged 19), Richard Greener (aged 21), Mark Norsworthy (aged 18), Stephen Wilkinson (aged 18), Jason Winter (aged 19), Blair Bishop (aged 19), Alexander Lewis (aged 18) and Peter Bullock (aged 21). This is the single biggest loss of life for the British Army from an IRA attack in Northern Ireland since the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979, although eleven off-duty British soldiers had been killed in the Droppin Well bombing in 1982, carried out by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). An account from one of the survivors is published in Ken Wharton‘s book A Long Long War: Voices from the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1969–98 (2008).
An inquest into the attack is told that the road is usually off-limits to military vehicles, due to the threat from the IRA. The driver of the bus, who is also a soldier, claims he had been directed on to the road by diversion signs. The inquest hears that signs had not been placed by the police or the roads service. The IRA denies placing any signs and says that military buses often use the road. The mother of one of those killed accuses the British military of negligence and claims it is “trying to conceal the truth.”
Shortly thereafter, the Provisional IRA issues a statement claiming responsibility. It says that the attack had been carried out by its Tyrone Brigade and adds: “We will not lay down our arms until the peace of a British disengagement from Ireland.” The security forces suspect that an informer may have told the IRA of the bus’s route and the time it would pass a specific spot. After the attack, the British military decides to start ferrying their troops to and from East Tyrone by helicopter to avoid any future attacks like this.
Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, says there is “some evidence” that the explosives used are part of a consignment from Libya. He also states that the possibility of reintroducing internment is “under review”. Libyan weaponry enables the IRA to mount some of its biggest operations during its campaign. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to be one of these attacks. One former IRA member later suggests that Semtex explosive was not crucial to the outcome of the attack, saying, “we were having plenty of success without Semtex… at Ballygawley we ‘only’ got eight, but it was a bus of about fifty-six. If we’d used a fertiliser bomb, the whole bus would have been destroyed.”
On August 30, 1988, three IRA members are ambushed and killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) at Drumnakilly, County Tyrone. According to author Nick Van der Bijl, the men—Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin—are identified by British intelligence as the perpetrators of the bombing. Peter Taylor, instead, says that only Mullin is suspected, and that plans for the SAS operation were already underway at the time of the IRA attack.
Two months after the attack, the British Government introduces the broadcasting ban. It means that the voices of Sinn Féin and IRA members are not allowed to be broadcast on television or radio. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to have influenced the Government’s decision to introduce the ban.
According to state papers declassified in 2019, the attack sparks “panic” in the British Government, and tension between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the British Army over who is at fault for the security lapse. British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher warns RUC chief, John Hermon, that she will no longer send British troops over “in waves to be killed.”
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 TDBrendan 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.”
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.
The road and castle are on the northern bank of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Republic’s side of the river, the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth, is an ideal spot from which to launch an ambush. It is thickly wooded, which gives cover to the ambushers, and the river border prevents British forces from giving chase.
On the afternoon of August 27, a British Army convoy of one Land Rover and two four-ton lorries carrying soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment is driving from Ballykinlar Barracks to Newry. The British Army is aware of the dangers of using the stretch of road along the Newry River and often declares it out of bounds. However, they sometimes use it to avoid setting a pattern. At 4:40 p.m., as the convoy is driving past Narrow Water Castle, an 800-pound fertiliser bomb, hidden among bales of straw on a parked flatbed trailer, is detonated by remote control by IRA members watching from across the border in County Louth. The explosion catches the last lorry in the convoy, hurling it onto its side and instantly killing six paratroopers, whose bodies are scattered across the road. There are only two survivors amongst the soldiers traveling in the lorry, both of whom receive serious injuries. The lorry’s driver, Anthony Wood (19), is one of those killed. All that remains of his body is his pelvis, welded to the seat by the fierce heat of the blast.
According to the soldiers, immediately after the blast they are targeted by rifle fire from the woods on the Cooley Peninsula on the other side of the border, with this view supported by two part-time firefighters assisting the wounded. Shortly afterwards, the two IRA members arrested by the Garda Síochána and suspected of being behind the ambush, are found to have traces of gunsmoke residue on their hands and on the motorbike they are riding. The IRA’s first statement on the incident, however, denies that any shots had been fired at the troops, and according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers might have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire. Nevertheless, at the official inquiry the soldiers declare on oath that they had been fired on.
The surviving paratroopers radio for urgent assistance, and reinforcements are dispatched to the scene by road. A rapid reaction unit is sent by Gazelle helicopter, consisting of Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, commanding officer of the Queen’s Own Highlanders, his signaler Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, and army medics. Another helicopter, a Wessex, lands to pick up the wounded. Colonel Blair assumes command once at the site.
William Hudson, a 29-year-old from London, is killed by the British Army and his cousin Barry Hudson, a 25-year-old native of Dingle, is wounded when shots are fired across the Newry River into the Republic of Ireland about 3 km from the village of Omeath, County Louth.
The pair are partners in ‘Hudson Amusements’ and had been operating their amusements in Omeath for the duration of the Omeath Gala. When the first explosion is heard across the Lough, the pair go down to the shore to see what is unfolding. The pair makes their way to Narrow Water on the southern side of the border to get a better view of what is happening on the northern side. Barry Hudson is shot in the arm and as he falls to the ground he sees his cousin, who is the son of a coachman at Buckingham Palace, fall to the ground, shot in the head. He dies almost immediately.
The IRA had been studying how the British Army behaves after a bombing and correctly predicts that they would set up an incident command point (ICP) at the stone gateway on the other side of the road. At 5:12 p.m., thirty-two minutes after the first explosion, another 800-pound bomb hidden in milk pails explodes at the gateway, destroying it and hurling lumps of granite through the air. It detonates as the Wessex helicopter is taking off carrying wounded soldiers. The helicopter is damaged by the blast but does not crash.
The second explosion kills twelve soldiers, ten from the Parachute Regiment and the two from the Queen’s Own Highlanders. Lieutenant Colonel Blair is the second Lieutenant Colonel to be killed in the Troubles up until then, following Lieutenant Colonel Corden-Lloyd of the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets in 1978. Only one of Colonel Blair’s epaulettes remains to identify him as his body had been vaporised in the blast. The epaulette is taken from the scene by BrigadierDavid Thorne to a security briefing with Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher to “illustrate the human factor” of the attack. Mike Jackson, then a major in the Parachute Regiment, is at the scene soon after the second explosion and later describes seeing human remains scattered over the road, in the water and hanging from the trees. He is asked to identify the face of his friend, Major Peter Fursman, still recognisable after it had been ripped from his head by the explosion and recovered from the water by divers from the Royal Engineers.
Press photographer Peter Molloy, who arrives at the scene after the first explosion, comes close to being shot by an angry paratrooper who sees him taking photographs of the dead and dying instead of offering to help the wounded. The soldier is tackled by his comrades. Molloy says, “I was shouted at and called all sorts of things, but I understood why. I had trespassed on the worst day of these fellas’ lives and taken pictures of it.”
The Warrenpoint ambush is a victory for the IRA. It is the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles and the Parachute Regiment’s biggest loss since World War II, with sixteen paratroopers killed. General Sir James Glover, Commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, later says it was “arguably the most successful and certainly one of the best planned IRA attacks of the whole campaign.” The ambush happens on the same day that Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the British royal family, is killed by an IRA bomb aboard his boat at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, along with three others.
Republicans portray the attack as retaliation for Bloody Sunday in 1972 when the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 unarmed civilians during a protest march in Derry. Graffiti appears in republican areas declaring “13 gone and not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten.” The day after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) retaliates by shooting dead a Catholic man, John Patrick Hardy (43), at his home in Belfast‘s New Lodge estate. Hardy is targeted in the mistaken belief that he is an IRA member.
Very shortly after the ambush, IRA volunteers Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan are arrested by the Gardaí. They are stopped while riding a motorbike on a road opposite Narrow Water Castle. They are later released on bail due to lack of evidence. Burns dies in 1988 when a bomb he is handling explodes prematurely. In 1998, former IRA member Eamon Collins claims that Burns had been one of those who carried out the Warrenpoint ambush. No one has ever been criminally charged.
According to Toby Harnden, the attack “drove a wedge” between the Army and the RUC. Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Creasey, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland, suggests to Margaret Thatcher that internment should be brought back and that liaison with the Gardaí should be left in the hands of the military. Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, claims instead that the British Army practice since 1975 of supplying their garrisons in south County Armagh by helicopter gives too much freedom of movement to the IRA. One result is the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield to a new position of Co-ordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland. His role is to co-ordinate intelligence between the military, MI5 and the RUC. Another is the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members. Tim Pat Coogan asserts that the deaths of the 18 soldiers hastens the move to Ulsterisation.
The Provisional IRA had been attacking British Army patrols and convoys with land mines and roadside bombs since the beginning of its campaign in the early 1970s. The deadliest attack was the Warrenpoint ambush of August 1979, when 18 soldiers were killed by two large roadside bombs near Warrenpoint, County Down. In July 1983, four soldiers of the local Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) were killed when their vehicle struck an IRA land mine near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. It was the UDR’s biggest loss of life up until then.
On the morning of April 9, 1990, two UDR armoured landrovers are traveling from Abercorn Barracks to Downpatrick. An IRA unit has planted a 1,000-pound improvised land mine in a culvert under the Ballydugan Road, just outside the town. The unit waits in woodland overlooking the road, about 350 feet away. As the landrovers drive over the culvert, the IRA detonates the bomb by command wire. The huge blast blows the vehicle into a field and gouges a large crater in the road, 50 feet wide and 15 feet deep. A witness describes “a scene of utter carnage.” Four soldiers are killed: Michael Adams (23), John Birch (28), John Bradley (25), and Steven Smart (23). It is the biggest loss of life suffered by the UDR since the 1983 Ballygawley land mine attack. The soldiers in the other landrover suffer severe shock and are airlifted to hospital. According to police, a civilian driver also suffers shock, and another receives cuts and bruises.
The bombers escape on a motorcycle which had been stolen in Newry a week earlier, and is later found abandoned in Downpatrick. The IRA issues a statement saying the attack was carried out by members of its South Down Brigade.
A 23 year-old man is later sentenced to 15 years in prison for the attack. He had driven a scout car for the bombers when it was planted the day before the attack.
The son of a docker, Doherty is born into an Irish republican family, his grandfather being a member of the Irish Citizen Army which fought against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising. Doherty leaves school at the age of 14 and begins work on the docks and as an apprentice plumber, before being arrested in 1972 on his seventeenth birthday under the Special Powers Act. He is interned on the prison ship HMS Maidstone and at Long Kesh Detention Centre, and while interned hears of the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, where 14 civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army. This leads to him joining the IRA after he is released in June 1972. In the mid-1970s he is convicted of possession of explosives and sentenced to six years imprisonment in Long Kesh. He is released in December 1979.
After his release, Doherty becomes part of a four-man active service unit nicknamed the “M60 gang” due to their use of an M60 heavy machine gun, along with Angelo Fusco and Paul Magee. On April 9, 1980, the unit lures the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) into an ambush on Stewartstown Road, killing one constable and wounding two others. On May 2 the unit is planning another attack and has taken over a house on Antrim Road, when an eight-man patrol from the Special Air Service (SAS) arrive in plain clothes, after being alerted by the RUC. A car carrying three SAS members goes to the rear of the house, and another car carrying five SAS members arrives at the front of the house. As the SAS members at the front of the house exit the car, the IRA unit opens fire with the M60 machine gun from an upstairs window, hitting Captain Herbert Westmacott in the head and shoulder. Westmacott, who is killed instantly, is the highest-ranking member of the SAS killed in Northern Ireland. The remaining SAS members at the front, armed with Colt Commando automatic rifles, submachine guns and Browning pistols, return fire but are forced to withdraw. Magee is apprehended by the SAS members at the rear of the house while attempting to prepare the IRA unit’s escape in a transit van, while the other three IRA members remain inside the house. More members of the security forces are deployed to the scene and, after a brief siege, the remaining members of the IRA unit surrender.
The trial of Doherty and the other members of the M60 gang begins in early May 1981, on charges including three counts of murder. On June 10, Doherty and seven other prisoners, including Angelo Fusco and the other members of the IRA unit, take a prison officer hostage at gunpoint in Crumlin Road Gaol. After locking the officer in a cell, the eight take other officers and visiting solicitors hostage, also locking them in cells after taking their clothing. Two of the eight wear officers’ uniforms while a third wears clothing taken from a solicitor, and the group moves towards the first of three gates separating them from the outside world. They take the officer on duty at the gate hostage at gunpoint and force him to open the inner gate. An officer at the second gate recognises one of the prisoners and runs into an office and presses an alarm button, and the prisoners run through the second gate towards the outer gate. An officer at the outer gate tries to prevent the escape but is attacked by the prisoners, who escape onto Crumlin Road. As the prisoners are moving towards the car park where two cars are waiting, an unmarked RUC car pulls up across the street outside Crumlin Road Courthouse. The RUC officers open fire, and the prisoners return fire before escaping in the waiting cars. Two days after the escape, Doherty is convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum recommended term of thirty years.
Doherty escapes across the border into the Republic of Ireland, and then travels to the United States on a false passport. He lives with an American girlfriend in Brooklyn and New Jersey, working on construction sites and as a bartender at Clancy’s Bar in Manhattan, where he is arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on June 28, 1983. He is imprisoned in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, and a legal battle ensues with the British government seeking to extradite him back to Northern Ireland. Doherty claims he is immune from extradition as the killing of Westmacott was a political act, and in 1985 federal judge John E. Sprizzo rules Doherty cannot be extradited as the killing was a “political offense.” His legal battle continues as the United States Department of Justice then attempts to deport him for entering the country illegally.
Doherty remains in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and attempts to claim political asylum, and June 15, 1988, the United States Attorney GeneralEdwin Meese overturns an earlier ruling by the Federal Board of Immigration Appeals that Doherty can be deported to the Republic of Ireland and orders his deportation to Northern Ireland. In February 1989 new Attorney General Dick Thornburgh chooses not to support the decision made by his predecessor and asks lawyers for Doherty and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to submit arguments for a review of the decision and Doherty’s claim for asylum. By this time Doherty’s case is a cause célèbre with his sympathisers including over 130 Congressmen and a son of then President of the United StatesGeorge H. W. Bush, and in 1990 a street corner near the Metropolitan Correctional Center is named after him.
Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed on August 27, 1979, when Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists detonate a 50-pound bomb hidden on his fishing vessel, Shadow V. Mountbatten, a war hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, is spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland’s northwest coast when the bomb explodes. Three others are killed in the attack, including Mountbatten’s 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas. Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land kills 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland in what becomes known as the Warrenpoint ambush.
The assassination of Mountbatten is the first blow struck against the British royal family by the IRA during its long terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The attack hardens the hearts of many British against the IRA and convinces Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher’s government to take a hardline stance against the terrorist organization.
In 1947, Mountbatten is appointed the last Viceroy of India, and he conducts the negotiations that lead to independence for India and Pakistan later that year. He holds various high naval posts in the 1950s and serves as chief of the United Kingdom Defense Staff and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Meanwhile, he is made Viscount Mountbatten of Burma and a first earl. He is the uncle of Philip Mountbatten and introduces Philip to the future Queen Elizabeth. He later encourages the marriage of the two distant cousins and becomes godfather and mentor to their first born, Charles, Prince of Wales.
Made Governor and then Lord-Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight in his retirement, Mountbatten is a respected and beloved member of the royal family. His assassination is perhaps the most shocking of all horrors inflicted by the IRA against the United Kingdom. In addition to his grandson Nicholas, 15-year-old boat hand Paul Maxwell and the Dowager Lady Brabourne, Nicholas’ grandmother, are also killed. Mountbatten’s grandson Timothy, Nicholas’ twin brother, is injured as is his daughter, Lady Brabourne, and the twins’ father, Lord Brabourne.
The IRA immediately claims responsibility for the attack, saying it detonated the bomb by remote control from the coast. It also takes responsibility for the same-day bombing attack against British troops in County Down, which claims eighteen lives.
IRA member Thomas McMahon is later arrested and convicted of preparing and planting the bomb that destroyed Mountbatten’s boat. A near-legend in the IRA, he is a leader of the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade, which kills more than 100 British soldiers. He is one of the first IRA members to be sent to Libya to train with detonators and timing devices and is an expert in explosives. Authorities believe the Mountbatten assassination is the work of many people, but McMahon is the only individual convicted. Sentenced to life in prison, he is released in 1998 along with other IRA and Unionist terrorists under a controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement.
(From: This Day In History: Mountbatten killed by IRA, by the editors of History.com, July 21, 2010, http://www.history.com)
The bombing occurs during a period of heightened IRA activity. The previous two years are some of the less active and less violent years during the Troubles. The British policy of criminalization seems to be working but the IRA is gearing up for a new offensive. In 1976, 295 people are killed compared with 111 in 1977 and 80 in 1978 but in 1979 the number increases to 120 with 76 being British security force members compared to just 34 in 1978. The entire IRA “battalion structure” has been reconstructed using more smaller, tight knit cells making the IRA more secretive, harder to infiltrate and makes them much more effective at carrying out larger operations. The only brigade area which does not go under this reconstruction is the South Armagh Brigade which is viewed by the IRA Army Council as an independent Republic. In fact, by the mid-1970s South Armagh has become so dangerous for the British security forces, who are snipped at and have bombs thrown at them whenever they enter the area on foot, they have to be airlifted into the area and ground patrols are stopped altogether effectively giving up the ground to the South Armagh PIRA.
While the four Protestant members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary are on an evening patrol, they are all killed when a Provisional IRA unit detonates a remote-controlled bomb hidden in a parked van. The IRA unit detonates the well-hidden bomb at the exact second the RUC mobile patrol is passing giving the officers no chance of survival. The dead RUC men are, Paul Gray (25), Robert Lockhart (44), Richard Baird (28) and Noel Webb (30). The bomb is estimated at 1,000 lbs. and is believed to be the largest bomb used by the IRA up to that date.
In January 1981, Patrick Joseph Traynor (27) from Crossmaglen is found guilty of the four murders and a range of other charges. He is jailed for life on each of the four murder charges and is sentenced to 12 years for the related crimes.
The IRA continues to intensify their campaign. On August 29, 1979, the IRA carries out two separate attacks in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that shock the world and give huge media coverage to their campaign. The first is the killing of Lord Mountbatten and his grandson when the boat they are on off the County Sligo coast is blown up by a remote-controlled bomb. The second is the Warrenpoint Ambush where the IRA kills 18 British soldiers in a double bomb attack, the highest loss of life for the British Army during the Troubles. The IRA carries out several of these type of large attacks against the British forces throughout the 1980s like the 1983 Ballygawley land mine attack which kills four soldiers, the 1988 Lisburn van bombing which kills six soldiers and the Ballygawley bus bombing also carried out in 1988 which kills eight soldiers and injures 28.
The trial of Doherty and the other members of their four-man active service unit nicknamed the “M60 gang” begins in early May 1981, on charges including three counts of murder. On June 10, Doherty and seven other prisoners, including Angelo Fusco and the other members of the IRA unit, take a prison officer hostage at gunpoint in Crumlin Road Gaol and ultimately escape in waiting cars. Two days after the escape, Doherty is convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum recommended term of thirty years.
Doherty escapes across the border into the Republic of Ireland, and then travels to the United States on a false passport. He lives with an American girlfriend in Brooklyn and New Jersey, working on construction sites and as a bartender at Clancy’s Bar in Manhattan, where he is arrested by the FBI on June 28, 1983. He is imprisoned in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, and a legal battle ensues with the British government seeking to extradite him back to Northern Ireland. Doherty claims he is immune from extradition as the killing of Royal Irish Constabulary Captain Herbert Westmacott was a political act. In 1985 federal judge John E. Sprizzo rules Doherty cannot be extradited as the killing is a “political offense.” Doherty’s legal battle continues as the United States Department of Justice then attempts to deport him for entering the country illegally.
Doherty remains in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and attempts to claim political asylum, and on June 15, 1988, Attorney GeneralEdwin Meese overturns an earlier ruling by the Federal Board of Immigration Appeals that Doherty can be deported to the Republic of Ireland and orders his deportation to Northern Ireland. In February 1989 new Attorney General Dick Thornburgh chooses not to support the decision made by his predecessor and asks lawyers for Doherty and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to submit arguments for a review of the decision and Doherty’s claim for asylum. By this time Doherty’s case is a cause célèbre with his sympathisers including over 130 Congressmen and a son of then President of the United StatesGeorge H. W. Bush. In 1990 a street corner near the Metropolitan Correctional Center is named after him.
Doherty is returned to Crumlin Road Gaol before being transferred to HM Prison Maze. He is released from prison on November 6, 1998, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. After his release Doherty becomes a community worker specialising in helping disadvantaged young people. In 2006, he appears in the BBC television show Facing the Truth opposite the relatives of a soldier killed in the Warrenpoint ambush.
seamus dubhghaill 