Sean O ' Callaghan Sean O ' Callaghan ( born 26 January 1954 ) is a former senior member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) . Between 1979 and 1988 , he was also an informant for the Garda Síochána ' s Special Branch . In 1988 , he resigned from the IRA and voluntarily surrendered to British prosecution . Following his release from jail , O ' Callaghan published his memoirs , " The Informer : The True Life Story of One Man ' s War on Terrorism " . Early life . O ' Callaghan was born on 26 January 1954 into a republican family in Tralee , County Kerry . His paternal grandfather had taken the Anti - Treaty side during the Irish Civil War . O ' Callaghan ' s father , who had served in the IRA , had been interned during World War II at the Curragh Camp , in County Kildare . By the late 1960s , the teenaged O ' Callaghan had ceased practising the Catholic religion , regarding himself as an atheist and a Marxist . He sympathised with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement . In 1969 , violent attacks took place targeting civil rights organizers and many other Catholics . Believing that he would be helping to combat British imperialism , O ' Callaghan volunteered for the newly founded Provisional IRA . He was 16 years - old at the time . Soon afterwards , O ' Callaghan was arrested by local Gardai after he accidentally detonated a small amount of explosives , which caused damage to his parents ' house and those of his neighbours . After demanding , and receiving , treatment as a political prisoner , O ' Callaghan quietly served his sentence in the Irish prison system . After becoming a full - time volunteer , O ' Callaghan was involved in various IRA operations , notably in May 1974 a mortar attack on a British army base at Clogher , County Tyrone in which a female " Greenfinch " Ulster Defence Regiment ( UDR ) soldier , Private Eva Martin , was killed . In his memoirs , O ' Callaghan wrote that , although some individual UDR soldiers had had links to loyalist paramilitary gangs , he subsequently learned that Private Martin was not one of them . A secondary school teacher , she and her husband had both volunteered for the UDR . It was Private Martin ' s husband who found her body on a shattered staircase inside the base . In August 1974 , O ' Callagan walked into a bar in Omagh , County Tyrone and fatally shot Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan of the Royal Ulster Constabulary ' s Special Branch . D . I . Flanagan , a Catholic , was regarded as a traitor by both the IRA and many local residents . D . I . Flanagan was also rumoured , falsely , to have used excessive force while interrogating IRA suspects . Role as an informant . In 1976 , aged 21 , O ' Callaghan resigned from the IRA , and moved to London . In May 1978 , he married a Scottish woman of Protestant unionist descent . For several years afterward , he ran a moderately successful mobile cleaning business . O ' Callaghan later recalled , " In truth there seemed to be no escaping from Ireland . At the strangest of times I would find myself reliving the events of my years in the IRA . As the years went on , I came to believe that the Provisional IRA was the greatest enemy of democracy and decency in Ireland . " In 1979 , O ' Callaghan was the target of an overture by his former IRA colleagues , who wished him to rejoin the organisation . In response , O ' Callaghan decided to become an informer . In his memoirs , O ' Callaghan described his reasons as follows , " I had been brought up to believe that you had to take responsibility for you own actions . If you did something wrong than you made amends . I came to believe that individuals taking responsibility for their own actions is the basis for civilization , Without that safety net we have nothing . " " The final straw , " was O ' Callaghan ' s disgust over the IRA ' s fatal bombing attack on the yacht of Lord Mountbatten , which also killed several children . After rejoining the IRA , O ' Callaghan claims he heard allegations that the bombing was planned to obtain money from the Soviet military intelligence service , the GRU and the East German Stasi . In 1979 , O ' Callaghan and his wife moved to Tralee , where he arranged a clandestine meeting with a local officer of the Garda Special Branch . In Tralee ' s Roman Catholic cemetery , O ' Callaghan expressed his intention to subvert the IRA from within . He insisted that he would only speak directly to his contact and would not be blackmailed into providing information . O ' Callaghan explained that he would freely give whatever information was asked for , however . At first , O ' Callaghan ' s role was largely confined to preventing the IRA from committing armed robbery of County Kerry post offices and banks . Then , during the 1981 hunger strike s in the Maze prison , O ' Callaghan successfully sabotaged the efforts of republicans in Kerry from staging hunger strikes of their own . In 1984 , O ' Callaghan informed his Garda handler of an attempt to smuggle seven tons of AK - 47 assault rifles from the United States . The shipment had been purchased from the Winter Hill Gang , an Irish - American crime family based in South Boston , Massachusetts . The actual planning of the shipment was carried out by Patrick Nee , a South Boston gangster and staunch IRA supporter . The security on the American end of the shipment was handled by Kevin Weeks and Whitey Bulger , a Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) informant . Overseen by Bulger and Nee , the guns were loaded aboard the " Marita Ann " , a fishing trawler from Gloucester , Massachusetts . However , O ' Callaghan had already briefed his handlers on the shipment . As a result , the cargo was intercepted by a combined force of the Irish Navy and the Garda Síochána . The " Valhalla ' s " crew was arrested by US Customs agents immediately after returning to Gloucester . One of the crewmembers , John MacIntyre , agreed to wear a wire on meeting Bulger , Weeks , and Nee . After learning of MacIntyre ' s deal from FBI agent John Connolly , Bulger murdered him and buried him in a South Boston basement . Nee subsequently served a long sentence in the US Federal Prison system for his role in the shipment . In his 2006 memoir " A Criminal and an Irishman " , Nee compares O ' Callaghan to Judas Iscariot . O ' Callaghan claimed to have been tasked in 1984 with placing 25lb of Frangex in the toilet of a theatre in London At the time Prince Charles and Princess Diana were due to attend a benefit concert featuring Duran Duran and Dire Straits among other performers . A warning was phoned in and royal correspondent , James Whitaker noted later that the early departure of the Royal couple had seemed seemed rude at the time . The theatre had been searched before the concert and a second search following the warning revealed no device . O ' Callaghan escaped to Ireland despite being hunted by British police and in 1985 he was elected as a Sinn Féin councillor for Tralee Urban District Council , and unsuccessfully contested a seat on Kerry County Council . He claimed to have been in regular contact with its leaders , Gerry Adams ( now TD for Louth ) and Martin McGuinness ( now MP for Mid Ulster ) . Imprisonment . On 29 November 1988 , after having again resigned from the Provisional IRA , O ' Callaghan walked into a police station in Tunbridge Wells , England . He confessed to the murders of Private Eva Martin and D . I . Peter Flanagan and voluntarily surrendered to British prosecution . Although the RUC repeatedly offered him witness protection as part of the supergrass policy , O ' Callaghan refused to accept . In his memoirs , he states that he intended to continue combating Sinn Féin and the IRA through the press after his release . O ' Callaghan served his sentence in prisons in Northern Ireland and England and foiled several planned escapes by imprisoned IRA members . While in jail he told his story to " The Sunday Times " . Sean O ' Callaghan was released as part of a Prerogative of Mercy by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 . In 1999 , he published an autobiography entitled " The Informer : The True Life Story of One Man ' s War On Terrorism " . Robbery victim . O ' Callaghan appeared as a Crown Prosecution witness in August 2006 during the trial of Yousef Samhan , 26 of Northolt , London , after an incident in which O ' Callaghan was bound to a chair by two young men whom he met in a gay bar in West London . The court heard that O ' Callaghan was held at knifepoint while the two men ransacked the property that O ' Callaghan had been staying in at Pope ' s Lane , Ealing , London . During the trial O ' Callaghan stated that he had been looking after the property for a friend , the author Ruth Dudley Edwards , and he invited the two men back to the house for a drink after socialising with them in a nearby gay pub , West Five . O ' Callaghan informed the court that had frequented the pub " only because it was the nearest " public house . He further outlined that when they arrived back at Dudley Edwards ' home , he was then knocked to the floor , tied with an electrical flex to a chair and then held at knifepoint while Samhan and another man proceeded to burgle the property . In his defence , Samhan claimed that O ' Callaghan was a willing participant and had requested that he be tied up during a gay bondage session with the two men . Samhan was nevertheless found guilty of robbery on 6 September 2006 . Present occupation . He now lives relatively openly in England , having refused to adopt a new identity , and works as a security consultant , occasional advisor to the Ulster Unionist Party , and media pundit , usually whenever the IRA has made a major announcement . In 1998 , O ' Callaghan declared , " I know that the organization led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness would like to murder me . I know that that organization will go on murdering other people until they are finally defeated . It is my belief that in spite of IRA / Sinn Fein ' s strategic cunning , and no matter how many people they kill , the people of the Irish Republic expect , because they have been told so by John Hume , that there will be peace . There may come a time when their patience runs out . If that were to happen there would be no place for IRA / Sinn Fein to hide . We must work tirelessly to bring that day forward . " Controversy . Irish Republicans have strongly denied the allegations made by O ' Callaghan in his book ' The Informer ' and subsequent newspaper articles . O ' Callaghan stated that he had risen to leader of Southern Command and a substitute delegate on the IRA Army Council both in print and before a Dublin jury under oath . However , these claims have been disputed by Sinn Fein . A 1997 article in " An Phoblacht " alleges that O ' Callaghan " . . . has been forced to overstate his former importance in the IRA and to make increasingly outlandish accusations against individual republicans . " The Irish Republican movement also has denied O ' Callaghan ' s claims to have attended an IRA finance meeting alongside Pat Finucane and Gerry Adams in Letterkenny in 1980 . However , both Finucane and Adams have repeatedly denied being IRA members . In Finucane ' s case , both the RUC and the Stevens Report have said that he was not a member .