Father Patrick Ryan, the IRA's ‘Terror Priest' whose detonators were used in the Brighton bomb

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3 days ago

​Father Patrick Ryan, who has died aged 94, was a curate in London during the early days of the Troubles who moonlighted as a robber, money launderer and the IRA's linkman with the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi; gifted and arrogant, he refused to join the IRA, but ploughed his own furrow as a bomb-maker responsible for hundreds of deaths, earning the nickname 'the Padre' from his allies – and, from the press, 'the Terror Priest' and 'the Devil's Disciple'.
He was born in Co Tipperary in 1930, the second​ son of a family of six on a small farm. He joined the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, the Pallottine Fathers, aged 14, became a talented amateur engineer and a mercy pilot as a missionary in Tanganyika.
There were clues in his youth to what he would become. His mother was a gifted storyteller who gripped him with stories about her heroism and the wickedness of the Black and Tans a decade before he was born; mothers have traditionally been the primary passers-on of Irish tales of British injustice.
'I was captivated by her stories,' he told his biographer, Jennifer O'Leary, in The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest Who Armed the IRA with Gaddafi's Money. 'It was like I was back there with her, watching and listening out for the enemy. All she wanted was for us to listen, and we did. All you had to do was mention the subject and she was off, it was in her bones.'
From an early age Ryan displayed characteristics that would be useful in facilitating mass murder: as an eight-year-old poacher of fish, pheasants and rabbits, he showed himself more ruthless than his siblings, who called him Paddy the Skinner. Later, in Tanganyika, he would show an aptitude and enjoyment for big game hunting.
When he became a fierce anti-colonialist, he felt remorse for killing three elephants, saying: 'It was elephant country before any man or women.' But he showed no remorse for the men, women and children whose murders he facilitated: 'The only regret I have was that I wasn't more effective; that the bombs made with the components I supplied didn't kill more. That is my one regret.'
He was bored with the spiritual part of his job and quit as a curate in 1973. He based himself for a time in Benidorm, collecting millions in donations from the Continent and beyond, which he laundered and delivered to the IRA in complex financial operations. But his major contribution was to transform the efficacy of the IRA's bombs, which had suffered from faulty detonators.
In 1975, having spotted Memo Park timers in a Geneva shop window, he purchased the entire stock, which he re-engineered to become perfect bomb timers that would feature in atrocities including the 1979 Warrenpoint massacre of 18 British soldiers and the 1984 Brighton bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher.
A skilful global arms and finance procurer – 'I set out to go around the world and discover the enemy of my enemy, the Brits, and make their enemy my friend' – he was also quartermaster of a brutally effective IRA murder squad in Belgium and a leading suspect in murders on the Continent.
Amid furious international rows Mrs Thatcher unsuccessfully sought to have him extradited from Belgium and Ireland ('Ryan is a really bad egg,' she told the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey); met with indifference in Belgium, hostility in Ireland and the obduracy of the European Court of Human Rights, she failed at every turn.
Ryan secured 30,000 votes as an independent candidate in the 1989 European elections in Ireland. In 1993 he was expelled from the Pallottine Order 'for persistent refusal to comply with the legitimate instructions of his superiors'. He fell out with Martin McGuinness ('not to be trusted') and other prominent IRA men such as Joe Cahill ('reckless') and Brian Keenan (who 'should never have been let loose on society').
An attractive young English Protestant became smitten with him in London and sometimes shared the van in which he lived, but he permitted little intimacy in his life. 'I would say she was in love with me, yes,' he said. 'I gave it no thought, but I kept in touch with her because you see, you never know when you might need to call in a favour.' Indeed, she became a money mule until he ditched her as a security risk.
'The trick is to be patient,' he explained to his biographer, 'because, you see, every person wants something badly, and if you can wait and slowly find out what that something is and then provide it, you're a winner in any walk of life.'
Patrick Ryan, born 1930, died June 15 2025​
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