Henry Kirkpatrick (born c. 1958) is a former

Irish National Liberation Army The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA, ) is an Irish republicanism, Irish republican Socialism, socialist paramilitary group formed on 8 December 1974, during the 30-year period of conflict known as "the Troubles". The group seeks to remove ...

member turned

informer An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information inten ...

against other members of the INLA.

Arrest

In February 1983 Kirkpatrick was arrested on multiple charges including the murder of two policemen, two

Ulster Defence Regiment The Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was an infantry regiment of the British Army established in 1970, with a comparatively short existence ending in 1992. Raised through public appeal, newspaper and television advertisements,Potter p25 their offi ...

soldiers, and Hugh McGinn, a Catholic member of the Territorial Army. Following his segregation from other Republican prisoners the INLA kidnapped his wife Elizabeth, in order to expose a deal they believed he was making with the

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...

. They would later kidnap his sister and his stepfather too. All were released unharmed. INLA Chief of Staff

Dominic McGlinchey Dominic McGlinchey (1954 – 10 February 1994) was an Irish people, Irish Irish republicanism, republican paramilitary leader who moved from the Provisional IRA to become head of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group in th ...

is supposed to have carried out the execution of Kirkpatrick's lifelong friend Gerard 'Sparky' Barkley because it was believed that he may have revealed the whereabouts of the Kirkpatrick family members to the police.

David McKittrick David McKittrick (born 1949) is a Belfast-born journalist who has reported on Northern Ireland since 1971. Attended Grosvenor High School, peers recollect David spending his breaks reading dictionaries. Professional career McKittrick began his ...

et al., '' Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles'' (2007), p. 956. Despite the kidnap, in May 1983 ten men were charged with various offences based on evidence from Kirkpatrick. Those charged included

Irish Republican Socialist Party The Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP () is a minor communist, Marxist–Leninist and Irish republican party in Ireland. It is often referred to as the "political wing" of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group. ...

vice-chairman Kevin McQuillan and former councillor Sean Flynn. IRSP chairman

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...

was charged with the murder of a police officer. Others escaped; Jim Barr, an IRSP member named by Kirkpatrick as part of the INLA, fled to the USA where, having spent 17 months in jail, he won political asylum in 1993. 27 people were convicted based on Kirkpatrick's statements in December 1985. 24 of these would have their convictions overturned by December 1986. Gerard Steenson was given five life sentences for the deaths of the same five individuals for which Kirkpatrick himself had been convicted. These included UDR soldier Colin Quinn, shot in Belfast in December 1980.

Aftermath

The distrust and division that they sowed were the final act in splitting former comrades into warring factions and leading to the formation of the

Irish People's Liberation Organisation The Irish People's Liberation Organisation was a small Irish socialist republican paramilitary organisation formed in 1986 by disaffected and expelled members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), whose factions coalesced in the after ...

and leading to that organization's murderous feud with the INLA in which 16 people were killed. Kirkpatrick was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Edgar Graham Edgar Samuel David Graham, MPA, BL (24 February 1954 – 7 December 1983) was an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician and academic from Northern Ireland. He was regarded as a rising star of both legal studies and Unionism and a possible fu ...

, "Letters to the Editor", ''The Times'', 17 Sep 1983. It was recommended that he serve ten years, as compared to the then normal tariff of twenty years plus, and now lives under a secret name.

References

Sources

* McDonald, Henry; Holland, Jack (1994). ''INLA – Deadly divisions''. Dublin: Torc. ISBN 189814205X.

Arrest

Aftermath

References

Sources

Further reading