Thomas Murphy (Irish republican)

Thomas Murphy ( ga, Tomás Mac Murchaidh: born 26 August 1949), also known as Slab, is an Irish republican, believed to be a former Chief of Staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. His farm straddles County Armagh and County Louth on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In December 2015, Murphy was found guilty on nine counts of tax evasion following a lengthy investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau of the Republic of Ireland. In February 2016, Murphy was jailed and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
One of three brothers, Murphy is a lifelong bachelor who lived on the Louth side of his farm before his imprisonment.

IRA involvement

Murphy was allegedly involved with the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA before being elected chief of staff by the IRA Army Council. Toby Harnden (ex-correspondent for the '' Daily Telegraph'') named him as planning the Warrenpoint ambush of 1979, in which 18 British soldiers were killed, and he was also allegedly implicated in the Mullaghmore bombing the same day, which killed four people (including two children and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma). Murphy was involved in smuggling huge stockpiles of weapons from Libya in the 1980s and was a member of the Army Council that decided to end its first ceasefire with the 1996 Docklands bombing in London that killed two men.

Accused by the '' Sunday Times'' of directing an IRA bombing campaign in Britain, in 1987 Murphy unsuccessfully sued the paper for libel in Dublin. The original verdict was overturned by the court of appeal because of omissions in the judge's summing up and there was a retrial, which Murphy also lost. At the retrial, both Sean O'Callaghan and Eamon Collins, former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, testified against Murphy, as did members of the Gardaí, Irish customs officials, British Army and local TD Brendan McGahon. Collins, who had also written a book about his experiences, ''Killing Rage'', was beaten and killed by having a spike driven through his face, near his home in Newry eight months later. In 1998, a Dublin court dismissed Murphy's case after a high-profile trial, during which Murphy stated that he had: "Never been a member of the IRA, no way" and claimed not to know where the Maze prison was. The jury ruled, however, that he was an IRA commander and a smuggler.

''The Sunday Times'' subsequently published statements given by Adrian Hopkins, the skipper who ferried weapons from Libya to the IRA, to the French authorities who intercepted the fifth and final Eksund shipment. Hopkins detailed how Murphy met a named Libyan agent in Greece, paid for the weapons to be imported, and helped unload them when they arrived in Ireland. According to '' A Secret History of the IRA'' by Ed Moloney, Murphy has been the IRA Army Council's chief of staff since 1997. Toby Harnden's ''Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh'' also details Murphy's IRA involvement.

On 20 September 2016 the BBC's ''Spotlight'' aired a programme in which an alleged British spy who had infiltrated the IRA claimed that in 2006, Murphy had demanded the killing of Denis Donaldson – an IRA member and British informer – in order to maintain discipline. The BBC said it had tried to contact Murphy but had received no reply. He has yet to respond to the allegation. On 23 September 2016, the Donaldson family's solicitor said that the allegation was "absolute nonsense." He also said that "It does not marry in any way with the lines of inquiry that have been progressed by the Garda or by the Police Ombudsman".

Smuggling allegations and denials

In October 2005, officers of the British Assets Recovery Agency and the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau carried out raids on a number of businesses in Manchester and Dundalk. It was extensively reported in the media that the investigation was aimed at damaging the suspected multi-million-pound empire of Murphy, who according to the BBC
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