Seamus McGrane (1956 – 25 May 2019) was an Irish

dissident republican Dissident republicans, renegade republicans, anti-Agreement republicans or anti-ceasefire republicans ( ga, poblachtach easaontach) are Irish republicans who do not support the current peace agreements in Northern Ireland. The agreements follow ...

, co-founder of the

Real Irish Republican Army The Real Irish Republican Army, or Real IRA (RIRA), is a dissident Irish republican paramilitary group that aims to bring about a United Ireland. It formed in 1997 following a split in the Provisional IRA by dissident members, who rejected the ...

, and leader of a splinter group called

Óglaigh na hÉireann (), abbreviated , is an Irish-language idiom that can be translated variously as ''soldiers of Ireland'', ''warriors of Ireland'', ''volunteers of Ireland''O'Leary, Brendan. ''Terror, insurgency, and the state: ending protracted conflicts''. U ...

Real IRA

McGrane joined his former

Provisional IRA The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...

colleague

Michael McKevitt Michael McKevitt ( ga, Mícheál Mac Dhaibhéid) (4 September 1949 – 2 January 2021) was an Irish republican and paramilitary leader. He was the Provisional Irish Republican Army's Quartermaster General. Due to the Provisional IRA's involveme ...

at the formation of the Real IRA at a meeting in a remote farmhouse near Oldcastle in Co Meath in November, 1997. 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 McKevitt – the brother-in-law of IRA hunger striker

Bobby Sands Robert Gerard Sands ( ga, Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member (and leader in the Maze prison) of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze ...

– McGrane founded the hardline anti-ceasefire Real IRA. These dissident Republican groups were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process and were committed to continuing with an armed struggle against forces of occupation. 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.

Óglaigh na hÉireann

McGrane led a split from the Real IRA in 2009, leading the splinter group

until he was arrested. He would be only the second person to be convicted of directing terrorism in the Republic of Ireland. In 2017, at a non-jury three-judge Special Criminal Court sitting in Dublin, McGrane was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison for directing

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

and being a member of an illegal organisation. McGrane was convicted of directing the activities of an unlawful organisation between April 19 and May 13, 2015. He was also convicted of being a member of the IRA between January 2010 and May 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. At the time of his final arrest Seamus McGrane had allegedly planned a bomb attack in 2015 during Prince Charles' visit to

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. It was the third time that McGrane 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. Seamus McGrane died in prison on May 25, 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McGrane, Seamus 2019 deaths Irish republicans Real Irish Republican Army members 1956 births