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Sinn Fein teme il libro postumo di Brendan Hughes

Sinn Féin ‘fears book by ex-IRA commander Brendan Hughes’

Former IRA leader’s posthumously published memoirs could implicate senior republicans
Senior members of the republican movement have visited the family of Brendan Hughes to discover details of a book that the IRA commander wanted released after his death.

Brendan Hughes, The DarkHughes, who died in February 2008, left a series of interviews that were to form the basis of the book about his life in the IRA. Republican sources told the Observer this weekend that Hughes’ story includes new details on the kidnapping, murder and disappearance of Belfast woman Jean McConville in 1972. The mother torn from her children in Divis Flats, Belfast, by an IRA squad became the most famous of “The Disappeared” – the dozen or so people abducted and killed in secret by the Provisionals during the Troubles.

The Observer has learned that Hughes testimony directly links a senior Sinn Féin figure to the IRA squad and to Jean McConville’s death.

The former Belfast IRA commander handed the interviews to Boston University on the understanding they could not be made public until he died. It is understood at least 20 other former IRA veterans have also left interviews in a Boston University archive, which will be published after their deaths.

“The family received a visit a couple of weeks ago by top Sinn Féin figures who are panicking about Brendan’s book,” one former IRA prisoner told the Observer. “The problem for the leadership was that Brendan’s family did not know anything about the interviews, or what exactly is in the book. They didn’t know any details, but it shows you how worried the leadership is. In his own words Brendan directly links a top Sinn Féin leader to Jean McConville and the Disappeared.” He claimed that Hughes would also reveal the identity of yet another additional victim who was “disappeared” during the Troubles.

The beyond-the-grave memoir will be one of the most awaited books on republicanism in the Troubles. During the early 1970s, Hughes led one of the IRA’s elite units, which at one stage managed to bug the internal communications of the British army headquarters in Northern Ireland. Nicknamed “The Dark”, Hughes was finally arrested in a middle-class suburb of south Belfast, posing as a toy salesman.

In 1980 Hughes led the first hunger strike in the Maze by republican prisoners demanding political status. Before his death he said that if he had known the outcome of the “struggle” would be power sharing, he would never have signed up to the “war”.

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René Querin

Di professione grafico e web designer, sono appassionato di trekking e innamorato dell'Irlanda e della sua storia. Insieme ad Andrea Varacalli ho creato e gestisco Les Enfants Terribles.

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