headquarters at Dublin Castle. The Special Branch Division was then largely tasked with hunting down foreign spies and members of the IRA, who were interned and held without trial in the Curragh Camp. De Valera's government regarded the collaboration of the IRA with the intelligence services of Nazi Germany as a serious threat to Irish neutrality and its national security. According to historian Tim Pat Coogan, "An iron gloved approached to the IRA was the order of the day with vigorous raids and interrogations. As a result, relations between individual IRA men and the Special Branch became understandably strained, and the IRA, in its shattered and disorganised condition, came to regard the Special Branch as a greater enemy than the British Crown." Assassination At 9:45 am on 9 September 1942 at Ballyboden, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, O'Brien left his house and began getting into his car. Three IRA men, wearing trenchcoats and armed with Thompson sub machine guns, lay in wait for him as he drove out his drive and opened fire. The shots from the Thompson smashed the windows of his car but he was uninjured and he alighted and ran for cover to the gate but upon reaching it, he was shot by a single round to the head. The fatal shot was from a volley from a second Thompson gun and fired by another IRA man secreted across the Ballyboden Road adjacent to Kerr's Sawmill. Two of the assassins wrapped the Thompsons in their trenchcoats, mounted their bicycles, and rode towards Dublin. Future IRA Chief of Staff Charlie Kerins left on foot, leaving his bicycle behind. According to author Tim Pat Coogan, "The shooting greatly increased public feeling against the IRA, particularly as the murder was carried out almost in full view of his wife. As she held her dying husband, she watched his assailants cycling past." Detective Sergeant Denis O'Brien was posthumously awarded the Scott Medal by the Commissioner of the Garda Siochana. Aftermath Two years later, Kerins was arrested in a pre-dawn raid and tried by court-martial for the murder of Detective Sergeant O'Brien. At a special military tribunal in Collins Barracks, Dublin, Kerins was formally charged on 2 October 1944 for the "shooting at Rathfarnham of Detective Dinny O'Brien". According to Coogan, "At the end of his trial, the president of the Military Court delayed sentence until later in the day to allow Kerins, if