Balcombe Street Gang
The Balcombe Street Gang was a four-piece, in Greater London active task force of the IRA , which for several bomb attacks in 1974 and 1975 in England is responsible.
Terrorist attacks in the UK
From October 5, 1974 to January 27, 1975, there were numerous bomb attacks in England as part of the IRA 's ire nua strategy . The most devastating of these attacks were those of Guildford on October 5, 1974, Woolwich on November 7, 1974 and Birmingham on November 21, 1974, in which nearly 30 people were killed and several hundred injured. The aim of this IRA bombing campaign was to give new impetus to the stalled struggle for a unified Ireland by relocating to England.
Balcombe Street Gang attacks
The London IRA task force, later known as the Balcombe Street Gang , was responsible for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings , among other things . They also dropped bombs on various pubs, Harrow School and three London post boxes . The bombing campaign, designated by the IRA as Phase 1 , finally ended on January 27, 1975 when the Balcombe Street Gang planted seven time bombs in London.
Arrest and conviction
On December 6, 1975 the IRA task force carried out an attack on a London restaurant. The perpetrators, who were sitting in a recently stolen Ford Cortina, wanted to shoot through the window into the restaurant with a machine gun that was set to sustained fire. However, due to a jam, only a single shot was released. Since this restaurant had been attacked before, police had posted plainclothes in the area and an inner-city chase broke out on Balcombe Street. Here the group took two hostages in their apartment in an apartment building and engaged in several exchanges of fire with the police. The hostage-taking ended only after six days on December 12, 1975 with the abandonment of the four IRA members.
Immediately after their arrest, all members of the Balcombe Street Gang confessed to being a member of the IRA and also assumed sole responsibility for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings. They also illustrated that the people who had already been arrested and sentenced for these acts, who came to be known as Guildford Four and Maguire Seven , were not involved in the acts and were not members of the IRA. On January 24, 1977, the trial of the Balcombe Street Gang in London opened at the Old Bailey . As in similar cases, the IRA members considered themselves prisoners of war and did not accept the court. On February 7, 1977, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, but were released due to an amnesty linked to the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998.
Although the Balcombe Street Gang had assumed sole responsibility for the Woolwich and Guildford bombings, the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven trials were not renegotiated. In an appeal hearing, the new evidence was deemed insufficient for a revision . Rather, the prosecution tried to portray a joint execution of the Balcombe Street Gang and Guildford Four . The judge responsible followed this argument.
Individual evidence
- ^ Victory, Patrick (2002): Justice and Truth - The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven; London: Sinclair-Stevenson: p. 7
- ↑ BBC information on the Guildford-stop (English)
- ↑ BBC information on the Birmingham-stop (English)
- ^ Victory, Patrick (2002): Justice and Truth - The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven; London: Sinclair-Stevenson: pp. XI ff. (Chronology)
- ↑ BBC : 1975: Balcombe Street siege ends
- ^ Victory, Patrick (2002): Justice and Truth - The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven; London: Sinclair-Stevenson: p. 9
- ^ Victory, Patrick (2002): Justice and Truth - The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven; London: Sinclair-Stevenson: p. 9
- ↑ Case study of the Guildford Four on innocent.org ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English; PDF; 164 kB)
