Seamus McGrane
Seamus McGrane (1956 – 25 May 2019) was an Irish dissident republican and leader of the Real Irish Republican Army. Veteran republican McGrane joined his former colleague in the Provisional IRA Michael McKevitt at the formation of the Real IRA at a meeting in a remote farmhouse near Oldcastle in Co Meath in November, 1997. Dissident Republican groups were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process and were committed to continuing with the use of violence. The two had resigned from the Provisional IRA, where McKevitt was quartermaster general, when the terrorist organisation decided earlier that  year to begin decommissioning of its arsenal. Alongside Michael McKevitt – the brother-in-law of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands – McGrane founded the hardline anti-ceasefire Real IRA. At the formation meeting of the Real IRA, McGrane was appointed director of training for the new dissident organisation. Seamus McGrane was chair of the Provisional IRA Executive when the organisation split over accepting the Mitchell Principles. He played a leading role as chairman of the IRA's Army Executive in mounting serious opposition to the attempts by the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams to depart from the original principles of the  organisation. McGrane, leader of the splinter dissident group formed in 2008 and known as Oglaigh na hEireann, was only the second person to be convicted of directing terrorism in the State. His ally Michael McKevitt was jailed for 20 years in 2003 for directing terrorism. In 2017 in a non-jury, three judge, Special Criminal Court in Dublin , McGrane was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison for directing terrorism and being a member of an illegal organisation. McGrane, was convicted of directing the activities of an unlawful organisation, styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Óglaigh na  hÉireann, otherwise the IRA, between the dates of April 19 and May 13, 2015. He was also convicted of membership of the IRA between January 18, 2010, and May 13, 2015. At his trial the judge ruled that there was "the clearest evidence of directing an illegal organisation" and that "McGrane was leader of a splinter dissident group formed in 2008, known as Óglaigh na hÉireann" which was a distinct entity and operated “in a different capacity” from the Real IRA of which he had had been a key leader at the time of his 1999 arrest. Sentencing McGrane,the  presiding judge Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said that it was "a most serious offence". Mc Grane was also charged with membership but he denied both charges. When McGrane’s home and land linked to him in counties Louth and Wexford were searched, police found what the judge described as “a veritable arsenal of weapons and explosives”, including detonators, ammunition and mortars. McGrane was bugged by gardai as he plotted in a well-known Dublin pub with another man to carry out an operation involving explosives ahead of the visit of Prince Charles. At the hearing the anti-terrorist court in  Dublin heard that McGrane held discussions in a pub called The Coachman’s Inn early in 2015 with an IRA operative, Donal Ó Coisdealbha. The Garda (Irish police) had installed listening devices in the pub that secretly recorded McGrane talking about terrorist strategies. McGrane also told Ó Coisdealbha the target was to have “military significance” and referred to someone “coming on the 19th” – the same day Prince Charles arrived in Ireland. It was the third time that Mc Grane had been imprisoned by the state. The first period of imprisonment was for IRA membership in 1976 for which he had  spent one year in custody. The second conviction was in 1999 when he had been captured training recruits in the use of firearms, during a Real IRA training session for which he was jailed for four years also by the Special Criminal Court. The arrest followed an operation carried out by the Garda, Emergency Response Unit. Giving evidence at the trial,Det Supt Maguire said it was a training camp set up for training people in the use of paramilitary weapons. He said it was set up by a paramilitary organisation styling itself Óglaigh na hÉireann. At the time of  his final arrest Seamus McGrane had allegedly planned a bomb attack in 2015 during Prince Charles' visit to Ireland. Seamus McGrane died in prison on May 25, 2019.