Operation Flavius

Planned location of the bombing

The Operation Flavius ( Flavius was the name of the Spanish-born ancient Roman emperor Theodosius I ) was by soldiers of the Special Air Service (SAS), a British special forces in Gibraltar performed on 6 March 1988th Daniel McCann , Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell of the Active Service Unit (ASU), a division of the IRA , prepared the attack with a car bomb during a changing of the guard in front of the residence of the governor of Gibraltar. During the preparation of the attack, the three people were shot dead by an SAS unit. This is said to have happened because the SAS was misinformed and had to assume that the bomb had already been placed and prepared for detonation by remote detonation.

IRA planning

Crime scene: Shell petrol station in Gibraltar

The shootings took place near the Shell petrol station on Winston Churchill Avenue , the busy four-lane main road that runs from Gibraltar via the airport runway to the Spanish border. The three IRA activists moved to Gibraltar in search of a suitable parking space for their vehicle with a car bomb in the city overcrowded with parked cars. They prepared an attack on a 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment military band returning from a tour of Northern Ireland.

On the way there, McCann was the first to be shot dead with submachine guns by the plainclothed soldiers of the SAS when he reached for his luggage. The SAS team assumed he was pulling the remote control trigger to detonate the bomb, and Farrell shared the same fate as Savage when they reached for her hand luggage. McCann was hit five times, Farrell eighteen times, and Savage between sixteen and eighteen times. It turned out that the three shot dead were unarmed and had no remote control equipment with them.

The bomb material, 64 kg Semtex , was later seized by the Spanish police in a vehicle in Marbella .

Assassination at Milltown Cemetery and Corporals Killing

Ten days after the event in Gibraltar, three people, including an IRA activist, were shot with pistol by Michael Stone , a loyalist fanatic of the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), during the burial of the three dead in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast and about 60 mourners injured by numerous exploding hand grenades, which he threw into the mourning crowd.

Three days after the attack on the mourners, an event known in Great Britain as corporals killing occurred in connection with the funeral of some IRA members : British Army corporals David Howes and Derek Wood drove into on March 19, 1988 Belfast in plain clothes at a mourning ward at a funeral. The crowd initially believed in an attempted terrorist attack and lynched the British. The incident was partially filmed and generated national interest in Ireland and the UK.

Death on the Rock

A month after the operation Flavius sent the Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, on Thames Television a documentary Death on the Rock . The broadcast provoked severe criticism from the British government. British tabloids attacked the program's content and statements from people in order to discredit the program. The attacked resisted and successfully brought libel lawsuits against various newspapers, including The Sun and The Sunday Times , which were sentenced to heavy fines.

After parts of Death of the Rocks were shown on a documentary television program in the US , John J. O'Connor of The New York Times asked in 1989: “Was the IRA trio, carefully followed for days, in fact lured into Gibraltar? Why did the police fail to photograph the bodies or gather forensic evidence? Why was the press - Britain's tabloids were jubilant - told lies about a huge car bomb being defused and about the three suspects having died in a gunfight? This documentary's understated observation: 'There was a strong air of Government cover-up and disinformation. "(German:" Was the IRA trio - carefully observed for days - actually lured to Gibraltar? Why did the police fail to photograph the bodies or Forensic evidence? Why were the press - the British tabloids cheered - told lies about a giant car bomb that was defused and about three suspects killed in a shootout? The understated statement of this television documentary: 'There was one strong appearance of cover-up and disinformation by the government. '")

Retaliation by the IRA

On September 18, 1990, the IRA attacked Peter Terry in retaliation . Terry was governor of Gibraltar at the time Operation Flavius was conducted and had approved the use of the SAS. Several shots were fired at Terry through a window of his Staffordshire home . Terry was hit multiple times in the face, his wife Betty was injured below one eye and their daughter was shocked.

European Court of Human Rights

After the operation ended, there was a heated argument in Great Britain. A commission of inquiry that was appointed came to the conclusion that Operation Flavius was not an illegal operation. In 1995, the condemned European Court of Human Rights , the Operation Flavius by a narrow majority of 10: 9 votes as a violation of human rights. The majority of the court were not convinced that the killing of the three terrorists was necessary to deter people from unlawful violence. It was about the question of how far a state can go to protect itself and its citizens. The brief verdict showed the dissent in the legal interpretation of an article in the human rights convention between the right to kill in state self-defense and the right to life of individuals. The court also held that the three IRA activists had engaged in a planned terrorist act.

Follow-up

Professor Christopher Andrew , the officially commissioned historian for MI5 , the UK's domestic intelligence agency , who published a book marking its 100th anniversary, wrote that MI5 made a mistake in believing that McCann, Savage and Farrell intended to detonating a bomb at the gas station. There were no government orders to kill by shooting.

This book also contains an observation picture of Siobhan O'Hanlon in Gibraltar and her movement profile before the attack in March. Some British newspapers speculated that she was implicated in the attack. O'Hanlon was observed by the Spanish secret service in Spain and on their way back to Ireland. At times she also worked as the secretary of Gerry Adams from Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland .

Brian Fitzsimons of the Royal Ulster Constabulary , who was killed in a helicopter crash in Scotland in 1994, is believed to have been involved in Operation Flavius .

literature

Andy McNab : Remote Control. Kindle Edition 1998. ISBN 0-552-15235-8
Christopher Andrew: The Defense of the Realm. The Authorized History of MI5. Allen Lane 2009. ISBN 0-7139-9885-7
Nicholas Eckert: Fatal Encounter - The story of the Gibraltar killings. ISBN 1-85371-837-8

Web links

Commons : Operation Flavius - collection of images, videos and audio files

Murder on the Rock at www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk

Individual evidence

↑ Information on the website of www.wissen.de ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2010 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. Retrieved December 4, 2010 @1@ 2

^ The Irish Times, February 2, 2008 . Retrieved December 4, 2010

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom trial , paragraphs 15, 17 (c) and (d) on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom Trial , Section 52 on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/7/newsid_2516000/2516155.stm 1988: IRA gang shot dead in Gibraltar on BBC News of March 7, 1988

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom Trial , Section 61 on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom Trial , Section 78 on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom Trial , Paragraphs 108-110 on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

^ Judgment in the McCann and Others v United Kingdom Trial , Section 99 on the UK Law Online website . Retrieved December 4, 2010

↑ Taylor, Peter. Brits: The War against the IRA. London: Bloomsbury, 2001. 284. ISBN 0-7475-5007-7 , p. 284.

^ Charles Ingrao: Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholar's Initiative (Central European Studies) . Purdue University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-911198-85-7 , p. 1.

↑ Lost Lives 2007 Edition, pages 1121–24. ISBN 978-1-84018-504-1