Real IRA bombers were planning fourth attack

Wednesday April 09, 2003 04:22

by Fintan

What motivates these dickheads apart from rage?

MEMBERS of a Real IRA car bombing team behind explosions at BBC Television Centre and on a London high street were caught as the gang prepared a further attack, police said yesterday.

As three gang members were convicted at the Old Bailey, police said they suspected that a car and bombing equipment found at their farmhouse base would have been used for the new attack. The bomb, which could have been aimed at Christmas shoppers, would have been the fourth in a campaign that also included an attack on the centre of Birmingham on a Saturday evening. Robert Hulme, 23, his brother Aiden, 26, and Noel Maguire, 34, will be sentenced today with James McCormack, 34, and John Hannan,

19, who had pleaded guilty to terrorist offences. They all face lengthy prison sentences. The Real IRA, a splinter group opposed to the Ulster peace process, launched its first attacks in 2000, targeting Hammersmith Bridge, a railway line in West London and the headquarters of MI6.

The five were part of a second unit that left a taxi packed with a 50lb bomb outside the BBC studios in March 2001.

One man was slightly injured.

In August 2001 a 100lb bomb was left in a Saab car close to a packed public house in Ealing, West London. The bomb blew up while police were searching for it and seven people were injured.

The third bomb was planted in Birmingham in November 2001. Three policemen were covered in the home-made explosive when the bomb partly detonated.

The men facing sentence are described by police as “footsoldiers” in the campaign. Two other members of the gang have never been identified and the commanders remain safe across the Irish Sea.

Three of the five come from the republican border area around Dundalk, Co Louth. Damien Hulme, the father of the brothers, was once kidnapped by the Provisional IRA on suspicion of being an informer. Police later found a “Green Book”, the Provisionals’ rule book, at his home.