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Telegraph
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Blair administration failed to extradite Irish terrorist wanted over MP's murder
The Blair government moved too slowly to extradite a fugitive Republican terrorist wanted in connection with the murder of an MP, newly declassified documents reveal. Officials admitted 'the bird has flown' after failing to act quickly enough to extradite Harry 'Basher' Flynn, the convicted terrorist gunrunner. Flynn was named in court in the 1980s as chief of staff for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and is believed to have been a member since its creation in 1975 as a rival to the IRA. He has been wanted in relation to the assassination of Airey Neave, one of Margaret Thatcher's closest confidantes. Neave was Margaret Thatcher's shadow secretary for Northern Ireland and during the Second World War had been the first British prisoner of war escapee from Colditz Castle. The 63-year-old was killed on March 30 1979, when a bomb planted under his Vauxhall Cavalier exploded as it left the House of Commons underground car park. In 1975, Flynn was charged with stealing £3,500 in an armed bank robbery in Belfast but he tunnelled out of jail before his trial and continued to be listed as 'unlawfully at large' by Northern Ireland's prison service into the 21st-century. After escaping from Maze Prison, he was caught five years later while rioting about hunger strikes outside the British Embassy in Dublin. However, an extradition attempt failed. In 1986, Flynn was jailed for five years in France for illegally importing £70,000 of weapons including 100 light anti-tank weapons, 40 Kalashnikov rifles, three machine-guns and two mortars. Britain tried to extradite him again in 1987, but failed as his crime was deemed 'political'. Flynn, 71, now runs the Celts Well pub in Santa Ponsa, Majorca, where the INLA's emblem and memorabilia glorifying republican terrorists are on display. Foreign Office papers released at the National Archives show that officials missed a third chance to drag him back to face justice from the Balearic island in the late 1990s. Flynn was arrested in mid-July 1997, prompting an urgent missive to the Foreign Office from Madrid-based diplomat John Dew, who received the news from the consulate in Palma. On July 15, he wrote: 'Flynn came to the consulate's attention recently when he was arrested after hitting a musician on the hand (drink having been taken). 'He is still in custody awaiting trial. The local police regard him as somewhat unstable. He allegedly hangs around an Irish haunt in Majorca called the Celts Bar in Calvia.' Crown solicitors and the DPP in Northern Ireland were consulted, and officials found no theoretical barrier to extradition or statute of limitations on the robbery or escape offences, but the process did not move quickly enough. David Brighty, Britain's ambassador in Madrid, wrote to the Foreign Office again on Aug 13, in a somewhat exasperated tone, to say that Flynn had been released after paying a large surety. He said Flynn had been released ten days previously, after paying a Palma court some two million pesetas, about £10,000 after the money was brought to the island by a bagman from Dublin. 'The bird has flown' Brighty said the consul in Palma had 'not felt able to make too many direct inquiries, since Flynn was using an Irish passport and was seen by the Spanish as being an Irish National'. He added: 'It looks as if the bird has flown. If there were thought that we wished to take advantage of his detention, then we seem to have reacted pretty slowly to John Dew's teleletter of 15 July, which clearly signalled the opportunity.' A memo circulated in London said that officials would have to ask the secretary of state if they wished to 'seek extradition given that we have already lost on two occasions and that a further court hearing may be an occasion for us to be accused of terrible things with little chance of rebuttal.' 'Assuming that we agree we should seek the return of Flynn,' an official wrote. 'I attach a draft submission to the secretary of state.' A handwritten note then added: 'Not issued. Harry Flynn left the jurisdiction on 3 August. NFA for the moment.' The identity of the musician and the outcome of the trial are not contained in the papers. Flynn still runs the Celts Well bar and in 2019 declined to comment when approached by the Telegraph at his pub in Majorca. The same year Flynn was named in a book by Patrick Bishop, a historian, as a founding member of the INLA who would probably 'never be brought to justice' for acts committed during the Troubles. Flynn is believed to have lived in Santa Ponsa since the 90s in an apartment near the Celts Well. At the height of fighting between the IRA and INLA he became a target of the former as a 'godfather' of the latter. He survived an assassination attempt in Dublin in 1983 and another later shooting. The INLA, which Flynn was thought to have joined in 1975, declared a ceasefire after the Good Friday Agreement.
The Independent
11-02-2025
- The Independent
Victim says she was ‘humiliated' having to strip for Omagh compensation claim
A traffic warden who was seriously injured in the Omagh bombing has told how she was 'humiliated' by having to take off her clothes so her scars could be examined in a compensation claim. Rosemary Ingram said she was made to 'feel like a victim all over again' by the experience in 2002, four years after a Real IRA bomb devastated the centre of the town. Ms Ingram's statement to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry was read on her behalf by a lawyer. She told how on the day of the explosion, she had been asked to divert traffic in Omagh away from the courthouse following a bomb alert. She said a photograph taken by a tourist shows her standing close to the red Vauxhall Cavalier on Market Street which contained the bomb. I saw a cloud of debris and dust, all with the smell of burning flesh and I could hear people screaming. Rosemary Ingram Describing the moment the bomb exploded, her statement said: 'I suddenly felt a thud in my back and I first thought I had been struck by a car from behind. 'I saw a cloud of debris and dust, all with the smell of burning flesh and I could hear people screaming.' She said she was taken to hospital which was 'full of injured people and in complete turmoil'. Ms Ingram was treated for multiple injuries. She said she has been left with chronic debilitating pain as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and she had to take early retirement. She said: 'Twenty-six years after the explosion I still have shrapnel coming out of my body, sometimes with ongoing bleeding.' Ms Ingram added: 'We had to leave our home in Omagh because it was close to the hospital and each time I heard the sirens I had flashbacks and experienced PTSD symptoms.' Ms Ingram then said she had suffered 'humiliating' treatment after claiming compensation from the government for her injuries in 2002. She said: 'I was called to the High Court in order to assess my injury. 'The assessment took place in a small room with a plain window in front of six lawyers who arrived with their briefcases. 'They asked to see the scars on my body. 'I was told to strip to my underwear and to stand in the corner of the room, facing the wall, in front of the panel of lawyers so that the Northern Ireland Office's compensation agency could examine my scars to assess how much money I should be given. ' One of the lawyers even pulled with his pen at my underwear to see the extent of the scars.' She added: 'The experience made me feel like a victim all over again. 'I was close to tears. 'Thankfully, my husband, who had been asked to leave the room, refused, and stayed with me. 'He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders to give me some dignity and eventually said to the lawyers that that was enough.' Ms Ingram said she had campaigned for other victims who claimed compensation to be assessed through medical reports and photographs of injuries. Concluding her statement, she said: ' Justice would have been done by seeing that those responsible for this terrorist atrocity were convicted and bore the consequences of their heinous crime, but this has not happened.'
