Brendan Hughes

Hughes described his normal day during that period as "you would have had a call house safe meeting place and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float out in a car looking for a British soldier in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."

As Officer Commanding (OC) of the IRA's Belfast Brigade, he was the main organiser of Bloody Friday which was the biggest bombing attack ever carried out by the organisation against Belfast. On 21 July 1972, the IRA exploded 22 bombs all over the city leaving nine people dead including two British soldiers, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, two teenaged boys, and a mother of seven; 130 people were injured. Hughes regarded the operation as a disaster as he explained in the following interview set up by Boston College: "I was the operational commander of the 'Bloody Friday' operation. I remember when the bombs started to go off, I was in Leeson Street, and I thought, 'There's too much here'. I sort of knew there were going to be casualties, either because the Brits could not handle so many bombs or they would allow some to go off because it suited them to have casualties. I feel a bit guilty about it because, as I say, there was no intention to kill anyone that day. Read Less

They were interrogated for more than 12 hours at the Springfield Road Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks and later at Castlereagh before being transported to Long Kesh.

On 8 December Hughes escaped inside a rolled-up mattress in the back of a dustcart, and fled across the border to Dublin. After ten days he had returned to Belfast after assuming a new identity, becoming a travelling toy salesman named "Arthur McAllister". For five months Hughes lived in Myrtlefield Park near Malone Road, and was believed to be the new O/C of the IRA in Belfast following the arrest of Ivor Bell in February. Read Less

He refused to wear prison uniform and joined the blanket protest. Read Less

He was appointed to the IRA's Internal Security Unit and liased between Northern Command and rural units in Tyrone and Armagh. Read Less

At the start of the 21st century, he became increasingly critical of the political direction of the Sinn Féin leadership. Read Less

Many former prisoners also experience health problems upon release. Read Less