Michael McKevitt is the leader of the small Irish terrorist organisation, the Real IRA, which has been regarded as responsible for the Omagh bombing in the late 1990s, which killed 29 people.
McKevitt was a senior longtime member of the Provisional IRA. He served as Quartermaster-General of the PIRA, a role which gave him unique personal knowledge of the whereabouts of its arm dumps and access to them. He quit the organisation in protest at the movement's ceasefires and its participation through Sinn Féin in Irish peace process which led to the Belfast Agreement. McKevitt launched his own IRA, called the Real IRA, using guns and weaponry he as the Quartermaster-General of the PIRA had known the whereabouts of and had seized. According to information revealed in his trial, among his plans was the assassination of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Real IRA played a minor role in the Omagh bombing, in which 29 people, including a pregnant woman and her two unborn twins, and schoolchildren, were blown up. Though the Continuity IRA picked the target for the bomb, the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the attack. In the aftermath of the attack crowds of angry Irish people forced McKevitt and his wife to flee their home and place of work. Days before the conclusion of McKevitt's trial (see below), a Real IRA death threat against Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, MP was uncovered. Adams said he took the Real IRA threat "very seriously".
McKevitt was convicted by the Republic of Ireland's non-jury Special Criminal Court on 6 August 2003 of two terrorist offences; "membership of an illegal organisation" (the Real IRA) and "directing terrorism". Mr. Justice Richard Johnson said of McKevitt, "The accused played a leading role in the organisation which he directed and induced others to join." On 7 August 2003 he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Given all possible reductions and remission, it means that the earliest he can be released is 2018.
McKevitt was convicted in part on the evidence of FBI agent David Rupert, who infiltrated the organisation and got close to the Real IRA leader, who asked him to become the effective RIRA head in the United States.
McKevitt is married to Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, the sister of 1981 Provisional IRA hunger striker and Sinn Féin MP, Bobby Sands, who died during his hunger strike. Sands McKevitt has been described in media reports as the Number 3 in command in the Real IRA. Her husband, who was number 1, and a colleague who was number 2, are both in Irish gaols, having been convicted of terrorist offences.
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