Sinn Fein/PIRA Human/Proxy Bomb Attacks
Sinn Fein/PIRA had used Human
Bomb attacks in the 1970s, however, the attacks were stopped when Sinn
Fein/PIRA were consistently accused of being gutless cowards by forcing
civilians to deliver bombs that they did not have the courage to deliver
themselves.
Sinn Fein/PIRA would send
personnel to places such as Columbia, Syria, Palestine and so forth, to teach
paramilitary groups in those countries how to prepare and deliver Human Bombs.
In the 1986 Hindawi Affair, a
Palestinian Arab terrorist romanced an Irish woman working as a chambermaid in
a London hotel, getting her pregnant, asking her to marry him and persuading
her to fly on an El Al airliner to be introduced to his family in Damascus,
Syria.
She was stopped by airport
security at Heathrow, who discovered that he had planted a bomb in her suitcase
before taking her to the airport to put her on the flight.
Patsy Gillespie Murder
Martin McGuinness personally
sanctioned the Human/Proxy Bomb campaign in 1990, it was Martin McGuinness who
directed the operation to kidnap Patsy Gillespie, who was used by the PIRA as
the first human bomb in the 1990s Human Bomb Campaign, the PIRA forced Patsy
Gillespie, to drive a large explosive device to a military checkpoint at
Coshquin near Derry, where it exploded.
The bomb was set off while Patsy
Gillespie was still in the driver’s seat, killing him and five soldiers, Stephen
Burrows, Stephen Beacham, Vincent Scott, David Sweeney and Paul Worral.
It has long been established
that Martin McGuinness was an MI6 Agent from 1986, so it is difficult to
understand the logic behind McGuinness re-introducing the failed 1970s tactic
of using Human Bombs. Two things could arise here, firstly McGuinness’s
Handlers wanted to present McGuinness as a more ruthless terrorist than PIRA
Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, and therefore McGuinness should retake his
position as Chief of Staff.
Secondly, although not
exclusively, MI6 may have wanted to under-mine The PIRA campaign, by allowing
McGuinness to adopt a tactic that had cost The PIRA both domestic and
international support (i.e. Irish America) in the 1970s. Such perversions as
set out here cannot be easily dismissed.
Peter North attempted Murder
Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was the
PIRA Commanding Officer, of The PIRA Unit dispatched by PIRA Chief of Staff,
Kevin McKenna, to kidnap Peter North and force him to deliver a bomb to a
British Army base. Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan had at his disposal several well-seasoned
PIRA killers including Laurence McNally, Aidan McGurk, John ‘Dinger’ Bell and
so forth.
Bizarrely, Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan
also took Owen Smyth with him for the Peter North kidnapping. Owen Smyth was a
strange choice, as Smyth had turned informer when arrested by the RUC in 1981
for the murders of Norman Stronge and his son James. In 1990, Pete Ryan was
having a sexual relationship with Owen Smyth’s sister-in-law Dr Marian Smyth
(was married to Owen’s Brother Brian), and Marian Smyth would give birth to one
of Pete Ryan’s children after he was shot dead by the SAS in 1991.
Owen Smyth owned The Round
House Bar in Monaghan Town; the bar had been left to Owen Smyth by Robert ‘Bobby’
Loane who was married to Smyth’s material Aunt. Smyth only opened his bar in
the evening time on a Thursday, as Thursday in Monaghan Town was Social Welfare
Day (Dole Day) and Smyth did not want Travellers in his bar.
The PIRA Unit made their way
to Newtownbutler in County Fermanagh and at 9.30am, on Thursday, 22nd
November, 1990, they took over the home of Peter North
While Peter North’s parents
were held at gunpoint, he was forced to drive a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck to
Annaghmartin military checkpoint.
Peter North was forced to
drive to a Northern Ireland security checkpoint with the biggest bomb ever made
by the IRA had his legs badly beaten to stop him from escaping.
He was told that the truck
carried a bomb on a five-minute timer. When he reached the checkpoint, he
shouted a warning and a small explosion was heard, but the main bomb failed to
detonate.
The vehicle was found to
contain 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg) of homemade explosives, the biggest IRA bomb
until then. The same checkpoint was the subject of a heavy machine gun attack
on 26 December.
Bizarrely, in 1994 as I was
working as a retail security man in Belfast during recess from University, a
fellow security man told me that he was on duty at the British Army check-point
the day that Peter North drove the bomb into position. The now retired soldier
told me that when Peter North shouted the warning, all of the soldiers, except
for one, ran away from the bomb and Peter North.
The soldier who stood his
ground and helped free Peter North from the Van into which he had been strapped
and which contained the bomb, was a Black Solider called ‘Chalky’.
In the aftermath of the failed
Peter North operation, Peter North identified Owen Smyth as one of the PIRA
Unit involved in his kidnapping. Owen Smyth was arrested by Gardai in Monaghan
Town and charged for his role in the kidnapping. Smyth when arrested admitted
his role in the kidnapping.
When Owen Smyth was charged,
he began to try and cover up the fact that he had again talked while in
custody. Smyth began to ask members of Sinn Fein/PIRA to make false statements
claiming that they had been in hi pub on the 22nd of November 1990
and that Smyth was there all the time.
I was asked to make a false statement
to help Smyth with his alibi, however, I refused as I was working closely with
a member of East Tyrone PIRA on another project and I was trying to keep my
head under the radar. Eventually, Smyth got 26 people to say they were in his
pub and he was there all the time.
Smyth’s pub was a tiny
one-room entity that could barely hold 20 people. In a Prime-time documentary
in 2020 about William Hampton, Owen Smyth actually said that if there were 20
people in his pub it would be full. Smyth also said that his pub was full as
Sinn Fein/PIRA were celebrating Mrs Thatcher’s resignation that day.
This is not credible, as Mrs
Thatcher would only remain as a prime-target for Sinn Fein/PIRA if she held
high office, once retired, any attempt on her life would not have the same
impact as an attempt when she was serving Prime Minister.
Owen Smyth had the charges
against him dropped in relation to the Peter North kidnapping, yet any credible
investigation would have found that his alibi was nonsense. I was in The Round
House Barr 22nd November 1990, as I always went in on a Thursday
evening when The Northern Standard (regional paper) was published and I would
sit at the same bar and read the paper from cover to cover. Smyth was not
there.
Human Bomb Security Consequences
For the first time in four
years, in 1990, the British army sent more troops into Northern Ireland. Some
600 soldiers arrived in early December of that year as the province braced for
an upsurge of violence.
“Don’t blame us. Blame the
terrorists,” said the signs outside bomb-blasted checkpoints where traffic
crawled in long lines as soldiers carefully checked every vehicle.
Four border checkpoints had
been closed during darkness in a tacit admission by the army that it could not
totally protect them at night.
Taking over routine security
patrol duties, the newly arrived soldiers would free special undercover troops
to mount more covert operations against PIRA terrorists along the border with
the Irish Republic.
Britain now had 11,000
soldiers in Northern Ireland, the highest figure since the early 1980s.
Human-bomb attacks would kill
six British soldiers and obliterate two security checkpoints. Two near-misses could
have caused similar devastation, and survivors told grim tales of their
ordeals.
Gerry Kelly was tied into his
camper in October, 1990, with 200 pounds of explosives and forced to drive into
a British army camp.
Miraculously, he managed to
wriggle free, and the bomb failed to detonate.
“It was a ghastly ordeal and,
frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” Kelly said afterward. “I am now
thinking of quitting Ireland completely.”
Kelly, whose wife and
7-year-old daughter were taken hostage, added: “I just kept thinking about my
family and what would happen to them.”
A month later, the IRA loaded
Peter North’s pickup truck with 3,300 pounds of explosives, the biggest bomb
they had ever made.
His elderly parents were taken
hostage and tied up. He was told to drive the truck to a checkpoint. He managed
to raise an alarm and stagger clear. Only the detonator exploded.
“They battered Peter’s legs so
that he couldn’t run from the van. Animals wouldn’t do something like that,”
Maureen North said of her son. “We didn’t know what we were going to do without
him.”
It was the fifth time in 13
years that the Protestant family had been attacked by the IRA. They have now
gone into hiding.
Patsy Gillespie, a Catholic,
was taken from his home and forced to drive his bomb-laden car to a checkpoint
in Londonderry. The bomb killed him and five British soldiers.
On the same night, another
British soldier died in another human-bomb attack, but the kidnaped driver, an
elderly pensioner, managed to escape in time.
Sinn Fein/PIRA were convinced
that they could maintain their core support in nationalist ghettos despite
being widely condemned by politicians and clergy for the new tactic.
Patsy Gillespie, Human Bomb, Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, PIRA
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