Gerry McGeough convicted by Diplock court

Promiment Tyrone republican and former Sinn Fein Ard Chomhairle member Gerry McGeough has been found guilty of taking part in an IRA attack on a British soldier in August 1981.

Gerry McGeough, who was arrested in 2007, was also convicted in the juryless Diplock court of possessing firearms with intent and holding IRA membership.

Vincent McAnespie, who was also standing trial, was acquitted of the charges against him.

Mr McGeough was arrested in March 2007 as he left a polling station in Fermanagh where he was standing as an independent republican candidate.

He had been living openly in the north of Ireland for several years with his wife Maria and their 3 children.

Deported from Britain in 1978, McGeough found himself on the run in the United States in 1982 when an FBI warrant was issued for his arrest in relation to IRA arms charges.

In 1988, McGeough was arrested on the Dutch/German border and charged with a series of attacks against the British military on the Continent. At the time, he was wanted in five countries. He spent the next four years in German prisons.

Despite a two-year trial conducted in a specially-constructed underground bunker courtroom, McGeough was not convicted and, in 1992, he became the first Irish Republican prisoner to be extradited from Germany to the United States.

In America, he was eventually given three years imprisonment on foot of the 1982 arrest warrant. He wrote his first book of short stories - entitled The Ambush and Other Stories - while in jail there. In 1996, he was deported back to Ireland. His second book, a novel entitled Defenders, was published in 1998.

Urgent Appeal