Charges lodged in foiled attack on N. Ireland Assembly

The Protestant extremist who triggered a panicked evacuation of the Northern Ireland Assembly was charged Saturday with attempting to murder four people, including Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

Michael Stone, who was tackled by unarmed guards Friday at the entrance to Stormont Parliamentary Building, was arraigned in Belfast Magistrates’ Court on five charges of attempted murder. He also was charged with possession of weapons for terrorist purposes, including explosives, several nail bombs, an ax, a strangulation device and a fake handgun.

Stone has been an icon of Protestant extremism in Northern Ireland since March 16, 1988, when, armed with handguns and grenades, he single-handedly attacked a crowd of more than 20,000 mourners at an IRA funeral. He killed three people, including an IRA member, and wounded about 60 before running out of ammunition and grenades. Mourners came close to beating him to death before police intervened. As on Friday, his actions were filmed and broadcast internationally.

Stone was convicted in 1989 of six murders, among other offenses, and sentenced to more than 700 years in prison. He was paroled in mid-2000 as part of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

Britain’s Northern Ireland Office said Saturday that its legal advisors had drafted a revocation order requiring Stone to resume serving his previous sentence, an action virtually certain to confine him for years even without resolution of the new charges.

State prosecutors said Stone was charged Saturday with attempting to kill Adams and McGuinness, the two senior figures in the Irish Republican Army-linked party, and the two unarmed security guards who confronted him at the Stormont entrance.

The fifth count of attempted murder was a blanket charge of “persons unknown” intended to cover everyone else in the building, including the entire 108-member Assembly.

Stone, 51, offered no plea during the 10-minute hearing. He walked stiffly and slowly with the aid of a cane because of advanced arthritis.

As he was escorted from the dock, Stone denounced efforts to forge a cross-community administration led by the Protestants of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, the major Catholic-backed party in Northern Ireland.

The Assembly debate Stone disrupted Friday was on whether Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley would accept a nomination to the top power-sharing post. He refused, but did not rule it out for the future.