Release of Jailed IRA Bomber Stirs Anger

Irish Republican Army bomber Patrick Magee, imprisoned for trying to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet in Brighton, England, nearly 15 years ago, was freed Tuesday under Northern Ireland’s peace accord.

Magee’s release, which drew fire from Conservative legislators in London, comes at a time of rising tension in Northern Ireland as the Protestant “marching season” approaches without an agreement on the formation of a new power-sharing government in the province.

Fearful of renewed violence, the British army announced that 1,300 troops who had been withdrawn from Northern Ireland will return to try to head off clashes during the hundreds of upcoming parades commemorating 17th century Protestant victories over Roman Catholics.

The marches are scheduled to begin July 4 with the Orange Order fraternity’s parade in Portadown, which is often a flash point for sectarian violence. The independent Parades Commission is to rule Monday whether the parade will be allowed to go through a Catholic neighborhood fiercely opposed to the march.

Last year, the commission blocked the route, triggering a violent siege by the pro-British Protestant Orangemen.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern have set a June 30 deadline for Protestants and Catholics to break their deadlock over IRA disarmament and the establishment of a cross-community Northern Ireland government, but neither side shows signs of budging.

Blair and Ahern canceled trips abroad to go to Northern Ireland this week.

David Trimble, leader of the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party and head of the province’s would-be administrative body, warned in an article Tuesday in the Times of London that Blair is losing touch with the Protestant majority of Northern Ireland, and he made it clear that he will not sit in a government with the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, unless the IRA begins to disarm.

“On this important matter, a declaration of intention [from the IRA] would not be sufficient,” Trimble wrote.

Trimble has long insisted that the IRA must make at least a symbolic gesture of destroying weapons before Sinn Fein can sit in government. The IRA responds that its guns are silent and that the April 1998 peace accord does not require decommissioning of arms until May 2000.

The IRA insists that the pro-British Unionists are using the issue to block implementation of an agreement that they do not like. Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness said Tuesday that republicans want to see “total demilitarization by everybody in Ireland,” including the British army.

Conservative lawmakers condemned the release of Magee from Maze prison in Belfast, the Northern Ireland capital, before the IRA begins to disarm.

“Our criticism of the government and the prime minister is that he is not implementing the [peace] agreement in full,” said Andrew MacKay, the Conservative Party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland. “It is being implemented to the extent that prisoners are being released early. It is not being implemented by an end to violence and a start to decommissioning of illegally held weapons.”

Magee was the 277th prisoner freed under the Good Friday accord--one of 143 republicans, 125 loyalists and nine others. An additional 200 prisoners are expected to be released by July 2000.

Magee, 48, served 12 years of a 35-year sentence for the Oct. 12, 1984, bomb blast at the Grand Hotel in the seaside resort of Brighton, where the Conservative Party was holding its party conference.

Thatcher and her Cabinet escaped, but five people were killed in the blast, including a member of Parliament, a regional party chairman and the wife of a top party figure.

Thatcher declined to comment on Magee’s release, but others in her party were furious.

“The early release of terrorist prisoners is not desirable, and, bearing in mind the enormity of Magee’s crime, he should have served what the judge indicated,” said Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative spokeswoman on justice issues.