Patrick Magee (IRA member)

Patrick "Pat" Joseph Magee (* 1951 in Belfast , Northern Ireland ) is a former Provisional IRA volunteer who became known as the Brighton Bomber . He carried out the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984 to kill the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who was present . Five people were killed and over 30 injured in the attack.

Career

Patrick Magee was born in Belfast but moved with his family to Norwich , England at the age of four , where he was put on record for minor crimes. He moved back to Northern Ireland at the age of 20 and became a member of the Provisional IRA at the age of 21. In 1973 he was arrested and spent two and a half years in Long Kesh . After his release he married and had a son in 1978. In the same year there were bombings on a gas works in London and an oil depot on Canvey Island , after which Magee was put up for a search. He was then able to move to the Netherlands via France , where he lived with a Dutch family in Overloon and found work in a metal factory.

Magee was arrested by the Dutch authorities but released from Maastricht prison in January 1981 . The responsible judge justified this decision with the insufficient burden of proof of the British authorities, which had applied for extradition. Magee then traveled to Dublin in February 1981 , where he worked as a graphic designer for the Sinn Féin party and was the victim of a gun attack, after which he had to spend a few weeks in hospital.

From September 14-17, 1984, Magee had checked in as a guest at the Brighton Grand Hotel under a false identity and deposited a long detonator bomb in the bathroom of Room 629. The bomb detonated as scheduled on October 12, 1984 at 2:54 am. The aim of the attack was to kill Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the British Cabinet, who were staying at the hotel due to the Conservative Party convention at the time. The force of the explosion cut a path through six floors and killed five people, including two prominent members of the party. Margaret Thatcher was uninjured, but property damage occurred in her bathroom and bedroom. Over 30 people were injured, with politician Norman Tebbit's wife remaining paraplegic.

After the attack, the police checked around 800 people from around 50 countries who had been in the hotel in recent months. The identity Magee was using was revealed and he was identified by a handprint on the hotel's registration card. Magee's whereabouts could be found in Dublin . Since extradition proceedings seemed unpromising and Magee could go into hiding, the British authorities wanted to wait for his return to England.

Patrick Magee was able to return to England undetected and on June 15, 1985 deposited another bomb with a time fuse in room 112 of the Rubens Hotel in London , a luxury hotel near Buckingham Palace . July 29 was set at 1 p.m. as the time of the explosion.

On June 22, 1985, Magee was accidentally spotted at Carlisle train station while meeting with IRA man Peter Sherry, who was under police surveillance. Both men took a train to Glasgow , where they were followed by police to a shelter on Langside Road. There Magee, Sherry and three other IRA members were arrested. The officers were able to seize firearms, bomb diagrams, five-digit cash, forged passports and driver's licenses, and brochures from hotels in England. One of the arrested also carried a calendar with him in which 16 bomb targets in England were entered. This also included the Rubens Hotel with room number, date and time of the explosion, after which the bomb could be defused. The explosive device was in a food box and carefully prepared. Opening or moving the box would have caused an explosion. A timer ensured that the bomb was only armed after Magee left the hotel.

In September 1986, Patrick Magee was sentenced to eight life sentences outside the Old Bailey , with a minimum imprisonment of 35 years, for planting a bomb, causing an explosion, murder on five counts and conspiracy to bomb 16 targets in the UK . He was transferred to Northern Ireland in September 1994 and released from Maze Prison in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement . The British Home Secretary Jack Straw had unsuccessfully advocated further detention.

In October 1999, Magee earned a Ph.D. - PhD from the University of Ulster . In 2001 he published a book called Gangsters or Guerrillas ?: Representations of Irish Republicans in Troubles Fiction .

additional

The Brighton hotel did not reopen until August 28, 1986. A police officer at the time of the attack died in December 2015 from the effects of inhaling asbestos on the scene.

Patrick Magee was nicknamed The Chancer by the security authorities . It was the title of a British television series about a high-risk criminal who never runs out of luck. Magee was missing part of the little finger on his right hand, which helped identify him at Carlisle train station, among other things. Rumors that he was trained to be a bomb maker at a training camp in Libya were always denied by Magee.

After his release, he devoted himself to the peace process and appeared as a guest speaker. He also became friends with the daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, who was killed in the Brighton attack, and also maintains a friendship with the survivor Harvey Thomas, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher.

literature

• Terror Attack Brighton: Blowing up the Iron Lady , by Kieran Hughes

Web links

• Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA
• Brighton bomber Patrick Magee returns to scene of the crime 30 years on, telegraph.co.uk
• Patrick Magee: The IRA Brighton bomber, bbc.co.uk