Sean MacStiofain; IRA’s 1st Chief of Staff

Sean MacStiofain, who led the IRA during one of the bloodiest periods in its history, died Friday in a hospital in Navan, in the Irish Republic, associates said. He was 73.

MacStiofain was the first chief of staff and a founding father of the modern Irish Republican Army, which waged a ferocious guerrilla war against British rule until halting hostilities in 1997.

A seasoned IRA activist even before the Northern Ireland conflict ignited in 1969, MacStiofain was born John Stephenson in London and served in the British Royal Air Force.

MacStiofain, whose mother was Irish and father was English, adopted the Irish translation of his name but never lost his distinctive English accent during his time as a guerrilla warlord in Ireland.

He and two other IRA men were each imprisoned for eight years after they raided a military barracks in England, escaping with scores of weapons before being intercepted by police.

Before the IRA split in late 1969, he was reputed to have been its director of intelligence. He emerged in 1970 as chief of staff of the “Provisional” IRA--a hard-line nationalist group that saw physical force as the way to end Britain’s rule of Northern Ireland. The rival “Official” IRA is now moribund.

MacStiofain oversaw a fierce campaign of car bombing, setting off 34 bombs in Northern Ireland--22 in central Belfast--on Bloody Friday, July 21, 1972. Nine people were killed and 130 injured.

He was in a top IRA delegation that British authorities flew secretly to London in 1972 for abortive peace talks with the government. He was jailed for six months in late 1972, then went on a hunger strike, but abandoned it after 57 days amid reports that he was being force-fed food and drink.

Released from prison in 1973, he never regained his position of power within the IRA or its political ally, Sinn Fein.

MacStiofain moved to Ireland after his release, becoming a salesman for an Irish-language organization and a fluent Irish-speaker.