IRA man killed in Gibraltar did not want to go on mission, author of new book says

An IRA man killed during an SAS ambush in Gibraltar almost 40 years ago was reluctant to go on the ill-fated operation, it has been claimed.

Daniel McCann was one of three IRA members shot dead by the British army in March 1988.

Along with Mr McCann, Sean Savage and Mairead Farrell were part of a team sent to the British overseas territory to kill members of a military band.

The mission came to a deadly end when the trio were targeted in an SAS ambush which it is claimed was closely followed by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Details about the IRA operation and British army ambush are contained in a new book by best-selling author Martin Dillon.

‘The Sorrow and the Loss – The Tragic Shadow Cast by the Troubles on the Lives of Women’ explores the impact of the conflict on women, including former republican prisoner Mairead Farrell.

Speaking to the Irish News, Mr Dillon said McCann, who was a well-known IRA member, was opposed to the political direction of prominent republican leaders at the time.

“He was opposed to the search for an alternative to the armed struggle,” Mr Dillon said.

“He was opposed to McGuinness.

“It’s called the McGuinness-Adams faction in that sense.

“I am not talking about it terms of the IRA, I’m talking about it as a political faction.

“That’s really what the debate was about between him and the others, it was a political debate and he was opposed to that way forward.”

Mr Dillon said McCann was later removed from the IRA’s Belfast Brigade staff “probably by Martin McGuinness, I would suspect”.

The author, who has written several acclaimed Troubles books, has been told Mr McCann did not want to take part in the Gibraltar mission.

“I was told he was reluctant, he didn’t really want to go,” Mr Dillon said.

“He was nobody’s fool.

“I mean, they are going to send you to a place…the amount of scrutiny with that and you’re with two other people that are well known.”

“They weren’t the only ones…who went into Spain and they were sitting around in Torremolinos.”

Mr Dillon suggests all three IRA members were “high on intelligence lists”.

“Very often, these people in terms of the intelligence community were tagged – in other words if he’s not seen, or she’s not seen, for a certain amount of time in a neighbourhood an alert goes out….where are they?”

Mr Dillon believes some members of the IRA team, including McCann, would have been alive to the dangers.

“He would have known that Farrell would have known it too,” he said.

“You are sending the three of them to a place like Gibraltar, which is bristling with surveillance, you are sending them on international flights.”

He also highlighted that some people in key IRA roles at the time were working for the British, including Freddie Scappaticci who led the group’s Internal Security Unit, also known as the ‘Nutting Squad’.

Mr Dillon believes the decision to send the trio to Gibraltar was taken above Scappaticci, who he claims in the book was later asked by Martin McGuinness to take part in an inquiry into the deaths of the three IRA members.

“Whoever made that decision was beyond the level of Scappaticci remember, that decision was made at a much higher level,” he said.

“To send a former member of the Brigade Staff on an op, active service unit, you must be joking.

“Unless you want to get rid of him, unless he’s too big a problem.”

The journalist added that “nothing came” of the inquiry.

Mr Dillon was the first journalist to reveal that the IRA had secretly buried some victims in his acclaimed 1988 book, The Dirty War.

In his latest book, which he says will be his last Troubles related work, the author also deals with the abduction, death and secret burial of Jean McConville.

The mother-of-ten was taken to a beach in Co Louth where she was shot dead and buried in 1972.

One of a group of 17 people killed and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles, her remains were eventually found three decades later in 2003.

Sensationally, Mr Dillon claims in the book that a Garda informer was present when the tragic mother was shot dead.

He said one of up to three men who helped dig her grave was working for the state.

The man, a son of a senior IRA figure in the area, was later unmasked and allowed to leave Ireland by the republican movement.

It is understood he later made his way to America.

Mr Dillon said he is 100 percent satisfied a garda informer was present when Mrs McConville was killed.

“The source is too good,” he said.

The revelation poses serious questions for Gardai around whether they knew where the remains of Mrs McConville where during the three decades her family were searching for her.

Mr Dillon said the role of the informer may not be straight forward adding that “agents didn’t always tell their handlers everything they were engaged in” and that they “were always very unreliable people”.

The former journalist said it is impossible to say if gardai “knew one of their agents was actually at that site and therefore they knew that the grave was there”.

“But, you have to factor it in as a possibility,” he said.

“You are entitled to ask the question, did they know?

“Because, if they did know then, that’s an awful scandal, really.

“Another thing they should be asking too is, what kind of forensics came out of this?”

‘The Sorrow and the Loss – The Tragic Shadow Cast by the Troubles on the Lives of Women’ by Martin Dillon and published by Merrion Press is available now.