Four terrorists who carried out the Birmingham bombings in 1974 have been named in court today, with the apparent blessing of the IRA.
Inquests are currently being held into the deaths of twenty-one people who were killed in two explosions at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town pubs in November 1974, explosions which also injured 220.
An ex-IRA member gave bombshell evidence to the hearings today, in which he named four of those behind the attacks and gave the nicknames of two others.
The former volunteer, named in court only as ‘Witness O’, said Seamus McLoughlan was commander of the Birmingham IRA at the time and selected the targets.
He said Mick Murray and Michael Hayes were part of the bombing team and another man, James Gavin, was also involved.
Witness O said that he had been given permission to name the men by the current head of the IRA in Dublin.
Two years ago, Michael Hayes issued a public apology for the bombings, saying he was part of the group responsible, but declined to say if he planted the bombs.
Witness O’s testimony today suggests Hayes, who is thought to live in Dublin, was promised he would not be pursued under the Good Friday Agreement.
Murray and McLoughlin have since died, with McLoughlin given full paramilitary-style ‘honours’ at his funeral.
Gavin has previously been linked to the bombings. He died in 2002.
Witness O was accused of protecting another man previously linked to the bombings, Michael Patrick Reilly, who is also still alive.
The barrister then told him Mr Reilly was known as ‘The Young Planter’.
Witness O also claimed he had given McLoughlan’s name to two police detectives while in HMP Winson Green just days after the bombings, but heard nothing more.
He added that two other men, who he identified as ‘Dublin Dave’ and ‘Socks’ had also been involved, but that he did not know either man’s name.
Witness O, who was in jail at the time of the bomb attacks, described the bombings as ‘an atrocity’.
Yesterday, former IRA intelligence boss Kieran Conway, asserted that the attacks were the work of an autonomous cell of volunteers, done without the authority of leaders in Ireland.
He insisted that the pubs were not legitimate targets because they were not frequented by soldiers. And warnings designed to give police a chance to clear the buildings failed because phone boxes had been vandalised.
Astonishingly, Conway also claimed that the deaths were not murders, arguing that the victims were killed ‘accidentally’ during a war against the British state.
He said that in the aftermath of the blasts, an ‘OC’ – officer commanding – and his second-in-com-mand were hauled before a so-called IRA court which cleared them after hearing of the problems with the phones. They could have been expelled or even executed, he said.
Asked if the victims had been murdered, he declared: ‘It was an IRA operation that went tragically wrong. It should not have happened.
It was outside the range of permissible targets but in my opinion it was not murder.’ In 1975, six men – the Birmingham Six – were convicted over the blasts but acquitted 16 years later.
The attacks remain Britain’s largest unsolved terror crime. The families of the victims have waited 44 years for new inquests, which finally began last month.