Sean O'Callaghan
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Sean O'Callaghan is a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who turned informer for the Garda Síochána (the Irish police) and who was later debriefed by the UK's MI5 in the Netherlands.
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[edit] Early life
Born in 1954 into a republican family in Tralee, County Kerry, O'Callaghan was radicalised by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and joined the IRA at the age of 15. However, he was arrested and jailed after he accidentally let off some explosives, which caused damage to his parents' house and those of his neighbours. During the 1970s, he was involved various IRA operations, notably in May 1974 a mortar attack on a British army base at Clogher, County Tyrone in which a female Ulster Defence Regiment soldier, Eva Martin, was killed. In August 1974 he shot dead a Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch officer, Peter Flanagan, in a bar in Omagh, County Tyrone.
[edit] Role as informer
In 1976, aged 21, O'Callaghan resigned from the IRA, and moved to England, where he later decided to become an informer. He returned to Tralee, where he had a meeting with a local Garda, who had previously arrested him, and disclosed that he wanted to be an informer. He was allegedly the head of the Southern Command and was a substitute delegate on the IRA Army Council. Thus far he is the most senior Provisional IRA defector to have emerged. He was elected a local councillor for Sinn Féin, and was in regular contact with its leaders, Gerry Adams (now MP for West Belfast) and Martin McGuinness (now MP for Mid Ulster). In 1984, he helped to foil a bomb on a theatre in London, where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were to attend a Duran Duran concert. He escaped to Ireland, wanted by the British police, and was hailed as a hero by republicans, who were totally unaware that he was an informer.
[edit] Involvement in IRA kidnappings
In the early 1980s, when the IRA needed cash for the purchase of small arms, they engaged in the kidnapping and ransoming of wealthy members of Irish society, including supermarket moguls Don Tidey and Ben Dunne and Dutch industrialist Dr. Tiede Herrema.
O’Callaghan has also alleged that it was the IRA who kidnapped, and then shot, the famous thoroughbred racehorse, Shergar. As well as naming those who stole the horse, he was able to disrupt their next operation. Their plan was to kidnap Canadian businessman Galen Weston of Brown Thomas. They planned to seize him at home in Roundwood, County Wicklow. Acting on information from O'Callaghan, armed detectives from the Special Branch staked out the house and confronted the would-be kidnappers when they arrived in August 1983. A gun fight ensued in which two of the gang were wounded and three others captured.
O'Callaghan claimed to be in on the planning of the kidnapping of Don Tidey, but the operation was not foiled by Special Branch in the same way. Tidey was, however, rescued, but a soldier, Private PJ Kelly of Athlone, and a trainee garda, Peter Sheehan from County Monaghan, were killed in the process.
[edit] Marita Ann arms shipment
O'Callaghan has stated that his greatest service was in blocking a shipment of arms from the US on the vessel Marita Ann. In January 1984, Joseph Murray and John McIntyre visited County Kerry to plan the transfer of the arms off the Kerry coast. The gardaí kept the Marita Ann under surveillance and seized it as it was returning to shore with seven tonnes of arms transferred at sea from the US vessel, Valhalla.
The IRA realised the project had been betrayed from within, but people had their suspicions on both sides of the Atlantic. In Boston, John McIntyre suspected the whole thing had been betrayed by Joseph Murray, who was supposed to have flown to Ireland and sail on the Marita Ann. Although he reportedly flew to Shannon Airport, he then turned around and returned to Boston because his wife was supposedly taken ill. Following his return, McIntyre was arrested - not for gun running but for loitering. He promptly offered his services to the police to help arrest Murray.
The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was called in and McIntyre agreed to set up Murray for a major drug arrest, as he was the main cannabis supplier in the Boston area. McIntyre told the DEA that Murray was involved with a man named ‘Whitey’ but then McIntyre vanished and his body was only found 15 years later. McIntyre's brother Chris was convinced that his brother had been killed because he made the mistake of thinking that Murray was the informer. In fact, there was an informer at the US end, Murray's associate, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, older brother of the then president of Massachusetts Senate. Whitey Bulger notified the FBI as soon as Valhalla left Boston with the arms shipment. He was apparently trying to take over Murray's drug smuggling operation.
O'Callaghan was not the only garda informer involved. Sean Corcoran, regarded as a low grade informer by gardaí, suspected that O'Callaghan was also an informer. Four days before the Marita Ann sailed on September 14, 1984, Corcoran's handler, JP O'Sullivan, notified C3, the garda security division, that Corcoran was aware of O'Callaghan informer status. The IRA were inevitably going to deal with the treachery, so Corcoran was an obvious threat to O'Callaghan. Six months later Corcoran went missing in Kerry and his body was later found near Ovens, outside Cork city. O'Callaghan says he informed the gardaí to rescue Corcoran, but they looked for him in the wrong place [citation needed].
Martin Ferris, who was elected as Sinn Fein TD for Kerry North in 1999, was jailed for his role in the Marita Ann arms importation.
[edit] Literary career
Some time after leaving the IRA he walked into a police station in England and confessed to the killings of Eva Martin and Peter Flanagan. He subsequently served a jail sentence in prisons in Northern Ireland and England. While in jail he told his story to the Sunday Times and after he was released he wrote an autobiography entitled The Informer.
[edit] Present occupation
He now lives relatively openly in England, having refused to adopt a new identity, and works as a security consultant, occasional advisor to the Ulster Unionist Party and media pundit, usually whenever the IRA has made a major announcement.
[edit] Recent controversy
O'Callaghan appeared as a Crown Prosecution witness in August 2006 during the trail of Yousef Samhan, 26 of Northolt, London, after an incident in which O'Callaghan was bound to a chair by two young men whom he met in a gay bar in West London. The court heard that O'Callaghan was allegedly held at knifepoint while the two men ransacked the property that O'Callaghan had been staying in at Pope's Lane, Ealing, London.
During the trail O'Callaghan stated that he had been looking after the property for friend, author Ruth Dudley-Edwards, and he invited the two men back to the house for a drink after socialising with the pair in a nearby West Five gay pub. O'Callaghan informed the court that had frequented the West Five Pub "only because it was the nearest" public house to the property here he was staying at the time. He went further outlining that when they arrived back at Ms. Dudley-Edwards home he was then knocked to the floor, tied with an electrical flex to a chair and then held at knifepoint while Salman and another man proceeded to burgled the property.
In defence, Samhan denied the offense claiming that O'Callaghan was a willing participant and had actually requested that he should be tied up during a gay bondage session with the two men. It took less than half an hour to find Samhan guilty of robbery on September 6, 2006.
[edit] References
- Brian Campbell. tO'Callaghan - the truth. Republican News. Retrieved on 6 March 1997.
- Howard, Paul ‘’’’’Hostage: Notorious Irish Kidnappings’’’’’ (O'Brien Press)
- The Sunday Business Post
- Dwyer, Ryle ‘’’’’The IRA informer who kept gardaí on track in search for Shergar’’’’’
- O'Callaghan, Sean The Informer Corgi 1999 ISBN 0-552-14607-2
- Gay Community News
- Life Style Extra
- Sean Corcoran. Infamous informer tied up during burglary. IndyMedia. Retrieved on 22 August 2006.
- Ruth Dudley Edwards. the naked truth about me, the IRA whistle-blower and the gay bondage orgy. Sunday Independent. Retrieved on 27 August 2006.
