Seán Garland
Seán Garland (born March 7, 1934 in Dublin , † December 13, 2018 in County Meath ) was a veteran of the Irish Republican Movement.
IRA
Garland joined the IRA in 1953 . The following year he was recruited by the British Army , but only to gather information about the British armed forces in Northern Ireland. In doing so, he helped the IRA to acquire a large part of the weapons arsenal of the Gough Barracks in County Armagh , which it seized in a raid in June 1954.
The campaign was aimed at preparing for the Border Campaign , in which Seán Garland also took part. In 1957, right from the start, he was seriously wounded and arrested while attacking a Royal Ulster Constabulary base . In this operation he led, Fergal O'Hanlon and Seán South were killed. After his release from custody in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, that is, in the Republic of Ireland , in 1959 he was interned until August 1962.
Divisions
The Border Campaign failed, mainly because the IRA was wrong about having the people of Ireland behind it. As a consequence of the failure of the project, many Republicans looked for new ways and turned to Marxist ideology, including Garland. Accordingly, he joined the Official IRA when the IRA split in 1969/1970. He rose quickly in the Official Sinn Féin party , the political wing of the OIRA.
In the mid-1970s, violent elements separated from the OIRA and called themselves the Irish National Liberation Army . A bloody feud developed between the two groups, in the course of which Garland was the victim of an INLA assassination in 1975. He barely survived the attack.
From Official Sinn Fein was after several name changes Workers' Party of Ireland , which still exists today and its Chairman Garland in 2000. The Workers Party continues to see itself as the communist party and representative of all workers in Ireland; at the time it had good connections with the CPSU . According to an article in the Sunday Times, Seán Garland had also held the rank of Chief of Staff of the (now inactive) Official IRA since 1998 .
Under suspicion
In October 2005, Garland was arrested in Belfast : the judicial authorities of Great Britain and the USA accused him of being involved in an international money laundering ring that allegedly brought North Korean super dollars into circulation in European currency markets. The United States filed an extradition request against Garland for a foreign exchange offense. He was released on bail but did not show up for an extradition hearing. On December 1, 2005, an arrest warrant was issued against him. He then fled Belfast to Dublin . In 2012 the Irish High Court refused extradition to the United States.
Web links
- BBC: Leader of Official IRA in forgery plot (Eng.)
- www.seangarland.org: Workers Party website dedicated to the campaign to prevent the extradition of Garland to the US (engl.)
- www.timesonline.co.uk: IRA ballad hero accused by US of superdollar plot (engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Former Workers' Party president Seán Garland dies aged 84 , rte.ie, December 13, 2018, accessed December 14, 2018
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Garland, Seán |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish politician, leader of the Workers Party (Ireland) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 7, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dublin |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 13, 2018 |
| Place of death | County Meath |