You may have missed newspaper reports of Michael Quinn’s evidence in the trial of Soldier “F” in Belfast in recent days.
Michael Quinn was a 17 year old St. Columb’s College grammar school student who joined the Civil Rights march and who ended up being shot along the right side of his face, narrowly escaping death.
It is alleged that Soldier “F” fired the shot that ripped along Michael’s cheek, shattering his jaw and exiting through his nose.
Later, back at St. Columb’s College, Michael was extremely noticeable for the long indented scar along the entire right side of his face.
Michael Quinn was a classmate of mine at St. Columb’s, but he was a quiet student, from a “good family” in Marlborough Road – he was involved in nothing except his studies and I was surprised that he had even attended the Civil Rights march.
While I and some others of his classmates were already teenage IRA volunteers – well over a year before Bloody Sunday occurred – Michael was totally disinterested in such matters.
After my release from prison and while I was studying in Trinity College, Dublin, I was walking on a crowded Grafton Street [almost 20 years after the events of Bloody Sunday] when I saw a well-dressed guy walking toward me whose face – all these many years later – had a long scar along his right cheek. I knew instantly that it was Michael Quinn and we stopped and had a chat.
It did not surprise me that Michael was working in the banking industry in Dublin and leading a quiet and anonymous existence.
IRA Actions on Bloody Sunday
At different times over the years, Michael has offered the same evidence of what happened to him on Bloody Sunday and on each occasion he has referred to IRA activity he witnessed moments before he was shot.
Michael has testified repeatedly over the years that he saw two youths close by – peeping toward Rossville Street – holding what appeared to be nail bombs.
He continued that he then saw an older guy tell the youths to get rid of the nail bombs since they might get innocent people killed – the youths responded to this older guy and went out of sight with the nail bombs leading Michael to assume that the older guy must have been a known IRA man.
Michael Quinn was not the only civilian witness to claim to various enquiries that a group of youths close by Glenfada Park were seen with a larger number of nail bombs.
Michael’s evidence of IRA activity on Bloody Sunday was and remains extremely brave – since the IRA’s Derry Brigade ran a blatant campaign to intimidate and silence prospective witnesses of the later Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday in order to cover up IRA leader Martin McGuinness’ actions and orders on Bloody Sunday.
People were aware that “giving information” about the local IRA’s various forms of terrorism could lead to abduction and extra-judicial “execution” by the local IRA gang ordered by that undisputed IRA leader and mass murderer himself, Martin McGuinness.
Martin was seen by many people – including by IRA volunteers – carrying a Thompson submachine gun overlooking British army paratroopers in William Street just before the Bloody Sunday shootings.
Along with McGuinness was another well known IRA volunteer who was carrying a large explosive charge – in fact a bomb they were evidently hoping to plant in a building beside the British soldiers.
Martin’s Thompson submachine gun had been used 72 hours earlier on nearby Creggan Street to murder two young RUC contables, 26 year old Catholic Peter Gilgunn (married with one child, and an Irish speaker) and 20 year old Protestant David Montgomery.
This ambush of an RUC patrol car occurred about 100 yards from Michael Quinn’s family home on adjacent Marlborough Road just inside the so-called ‘No Go’ area – a stark reminder to him of the local gang of killers who might yet visit him to object to the information he was giving about IRA members.
Of course, the youths who were issued with the nail bombs on Bloody Sunday were either members of the junior Fianna (youth wing of the IRA) or else very young IRA volunteers.
In order for these kids to be issued with the nail bombs, a senior IRA leader had to order an IRA Quartermaster to open up a secret IRA “dump” of explosives and weapons and get the nail bombs ready.
The local IRA fancifully-named Battalion or Company of the IRA had to have ordered the youths to meet at a particular time to be issued not only with the nail bombs, but also with the instructions about where and when to use them.
This first notifications to the IRA volunteers would have occurred the previous day, Saturday, only 48 hours after the murders of the police officers on Creggan Street.
The IRA’s activities occurred just before and also during the Civil Rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday.
Soldier “F” and Tony Blair’s Secretive IRA Amnesty
While I was but 15 years old when Paul O’Connor suggested to me that I should accompany him to join the Provisional IRA in September of 1970, nevertheless I was in the IRA with Martin McGuinness for some five years until my arrest in May of 1975 during the then IRA/British Government ceasefire/truce.
McGuinness was both a Derry Brigade IRA leader and also a GHQ Officer at a much higher level – even by May of 1975, McGuinness had been responsible for scores of murders/killings, both of selected targets and of innocent bystanders.
As his IRA career proceeded for another 20 plus years after May of 1975 when I left his company to spend 14+ years in prison – his personal involvement in murders and killings and in ordering others to engage in murders and killings would have increased his kill rate easily to the hundreds.
I mean, it was Martin who supplied Derry Brigade IRA volunteers for a series of England bombings – he supplied me to that campaign via GHQ Director of Operations Kevin Mallon, but also a number of other well-known Derry IRA volunteers.
McGuinness’ killings covered not only Derry and surrounding areas – including Donegal where a number of Derry persons were abducted, interrogated and murdered as alleged informers – but also the whole of the Northern “Command” [Northern Ireland] area – plus the IRA’s Engand and European theatre bombings and shootings – not forgetting some murders in the Republic of Ireland whether kidnapped persons, Irish soldiers or Garda officers or prison officers, business persons murdered because their firms had contracts with the police in Northern Ireland – McGuinness was indeed a mass murderer who got away with all of those crimes.
McGuinness escaped what you might call “justice” as a result of the initially secret Amnesty offered by firstly Bertie Ahern [a man who loved to accept wads of cash without a bank account] and thereafter Tony Blair whose secret “administrative Amnesty” proceeded without the knowledge of the general voting public until the secret OTR letters – “Letters of Comfort” – were outed in the abortive trial of John Downey who was named as the Hyde Park bomber.
The bold John produced his secret OTR letter from the bold Tony and he walked free leaving a collapsed trial behind and a general public who had just suddenly found out about Blair’s secret Amnesty for the IRA.
Whether you are Irish or British, Unionist or Nationalist, Republican or Loyalist – does it not strike you as a matter of rank injustice that a British soldier – any British soldier – should be on trial in Northern Ireland when the massed ranks of the IRA’s terrorists – now disowned publicly by even IRA leaders like Gerry Adams who sues to be distanced from his IRA comrades – are covered by a generous Tony Blair Amnesty, initially suggested by that most venal Irish Prime Minister/Taoiseach Bertie Ahern?
Just asking…
The Irish Peace Process 