There were two timers, marked 10 hrs 45 mins and 11 hrs 15 mins respectively, but they were not primed or connected. Around this was packed 200 rounds of ammunition as shrapnel. These packages had four separate detonators attached. Keys to a car found in Farrell's handbag led to the discovery in Spain of five packages totalling 84 kg of Semtex explosive.
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No radio to remotely control a bomb was found on the bodies, nor was there a bomb in the car in Gibraltar which had been identified as belonging to the team. Some witnesses to the shooting stated that Farrell and McCann were shot while attempting to surrender and while lying wounded on the ground. Farrell was shot three times in the back and once in the face, Savage and McCann were shot by the SAS whilst walking towards the frontier with Spain, at the Shell filling station on Winston Churchill Avenue. Farrell and her two partners were shot dead (see Operation Flavius). The target was the band and guard of the First Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment during a weekly ceremonial changing of the guard in front of Governors' residence, on 8 March 1988.īritish MI5 was made aware of their plan and the SAS was deployed to prevent the bombing. The IRA sent her with Sean Savage and Daniel McCann to the British overseas territory of Gibraltar to plant a bomb in the town area. She dropped out of university however to play a larger role in the IRA's armed campaign. Upon her release from prison in October 1986, Farrell enrolled at Queen's University, Belfast for a course in Political Science and Economics. She was one of the H-Block/Armagh prisoners to stand for election in the Republic of Ireland in the 1981 General Election, standing in Cork North Central and polling 2,751 votes (6.05%). The dirty protest ended in March 1981 as the prisoner's rights' campaign was focused on the hunger strike being undertaken by Bobby Sands, leader of IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks. It ended on 19 December, a day after the men's strike. On 1 December Farrell, along with Mary Doyle and Mairead Nugent, began a hunger strike in Armagh prison to coincide with the one already taking place in Long Kesh. This meant that prisoners refused to slop-out and would smear excrement and menstrual material on the walls of their cells instead of risking being attacked by the guards while slopping out. Farrell instigated a dirty protest in February 1980. She was the first woman to do so, and the second person after Kieran Nugent, a prisoner in the H-Blocks of HMP Maze. When she arrived in Armagh Gaol, Farrell refused to wear a prison uniform in protest at the designation of paramilitary prisoners as criminals.
Do not stand at my grave and weep mairead farrell trial#
Īt her trial she refused to recognise the court as it was an institution of the British state and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for explosives offences to be served in Armagh Women's Prison. The RUC officer shot McDermott dead Keiran Doherty and another man escaped. McDermott and two other members of the IRA active service unit had broken into a home not realising it was the private residence of a policeman. Her boyfriend Sean McDermott was shot dead by an RUC Reservist at a nearby housing estate. She was arrested by Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers within an hour of planting the bomb. On 5 April 1976, along with Kieran Doherty and Sean McDermott, she attempted to plant a bomb at the Conway Hotel in Dunmurry, as that hotel had often been used by British soldiers on temporary duty to Ireland. In response, the IRA instigated a wave of bombings and shootings across Northern Ireland younger members such as Farrell were asked to participate. On 1 March 1976, the British Government revoked Special Category Status for prisoners convicted from this date under anti-terrorism legislation. She met an IRA volunteer named Bobby Storey, who persuaded her to join the Provisional IRA.
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She was educated at Rathmore Grammar School, Belfast which she left, aged 18, to work in an insurance broker's office. 4 Second term of IRA activity, 1986-1988įarrell was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland to a middle class family with no link to militant Irish republicanism other than a grandfather who was interned during the Irish War for Independence.2 First term of IRA activity, 1975-1976.