Marion Coyle (born 1954 [1] ) is a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Marion Coyle was born in July 1954 in Derry, Northern Ireland, and lived in the Duncreggan Road, a rather middle-class and fashionable area of Derry. [2] Coyle was a student in typing and advanced English at the time of the civil rights demonstrations and civil disorder which culminated in the Battle of the Bogside. In his work, Hostage:Notorious Irish Kidnappings, Paul Howard notes that Coyle was a very quiet teenager "showing none of the qualities that would make her one of the IRA's most fearless and respected Volunteers. [3] On the night of 26 June 1970 her uncle Joe Coyle, who was a member of the IRA's Derry leadership, along with Thomas Carlin, Tommy McCool and his two young daughters died when a bomb they were preparing in the kitchen of Tommy McCool's house on the Creggan estate exploded prematurely. [4] Following this, her brother Phillip was arrested and imprisoned for possession of a firearm.
In 1973 Coyle and three others were arrested in Sligo after they were stopped in a car containing guns and ammunition. The alleged IRA Northern OC, Leo Martin was charged in relation to the incident. [5] In 1974 Coyle was acquitted of the attempted murder of a Garda officer during the re-arrest of Kevin Mallon in Portlaoise (Mallon had been one of three IRA prisoners who escaped from Mountjoy Prison in 1973 using a helicopter).
On 3 October 1975 Coyle and another IRA member, Eddie Gallagher, kidnapped industrialist Tiede Herrema near his home in Castletroy, a suburb of Limerick. They were traced to a house in Monasterevin, County Kildare, and a two-week siege began. Coyle and Gallagher demanded the release of three republican prisoners, including Rose Dugdale, in return for the release of Herrema, but the authorities refused to grant any concessions. The siege ended on 7 November when Herrema was released, and Coyle and Gallagher were arrested. [6] The kidnapping was the longest in Irish history. [7]
In March 1976 Coyle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the abduction, while Gallagher received a 20-year sentence. [6] Herrema has stated he believes the sentences were too long, describing Coyle and Gallagher as young people who did something stupid. [8] Coyle was released from prison in 1985, and Gallagher in 1990. [1]
Hugh Aodh Doherty is a Scottish-born Irish republican, who was a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), known for his role in the Balcombe Street Siege, in London in December 1975.
Séanna Walsh or Séanna Breathnach is a Sinn Féin member of Belfast City Council and a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
In October 1975, Dutch businessman Tiede Herrema was kidnapped by the Provisional IRA in Castletroy, near Limerick. This triggered a large police investigation and a two-week siege, after which Herrema was released unharmed.
Patsy O'Hara was an Irish republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). O'Hara was one of 22 Irish republicans who died on hunger-strike.
Marian Price, also known by her married name as Marian McGlinchey, is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer.
Hugh Feeney is a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who, together with Dolours Price and Marian Price, organised the car bombings of the Old Bailey and Great Scotland Yard on 8 March 1973. He and ten members of his 11-man active service unit (ASU) were apprehended attempting to board a flight to Ireland shortly after the bombs were discovered.
Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann (1951–1995) was a German far-left militant, associated with the Movement 2 June (J2M) and the Red Army Faction. She married Norbert Kröcher in 1971 and later divorced him whilst she served a prison sentence. She was freed by the kidnapping of Peter Lorenz in 1975, then participated in the OPEC siege. In 1977, she was arrested in Switzerland after shooting two policemen. She was imprisoned until 1991 and died in 1995.
Raymond McCartney is an Irish former Sinn Féin politician, and a former hunger striker and volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Annacotty is a small village on the outskirts of Limerick, Ireland, 7 km (4 mi) from the centre of the city. It is situated where the old N7 main road between Limerick and Dublin crosses the Mulkear River, 1 km (0.6 mi) upstream of where it flows into the River Shannon.
Bernard Henry McGinn was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who was sentenced to a total of 490 years' imprisonment in 1999. He was released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The Maze Prison escape took place on 25 September 1983 in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. HM Prison Maze was a maximum security prison considered to be one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe. It held prisoners suspected of taking part in armed paramilitary campaigns during the Troubles, with separate wings for loyalists and for republicans. In the biggest prison escape in UK peacetime history, 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners escaped from H-Block 7 (H7) of the prison. One prison officer died of a heart attack during the escape and twenty others were injured, including two who were shot with guns that had been smuggled into the prison.
Brian Keenan was a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who received an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions, and played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
Angelo Fusco is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a Special Air Service (SAS) officer in 1980.
Martin Meehan was a Sinn Féin politician and former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Meehan was the first person to be convicted of membership of the Provisional IRA, and he spent eighteen years in prison during the Troubles.
Bridget Rose Dugdale was an English debutante who rebelled against her wealthy upbringing, becoming a volunteer in the militant Irish republican organisation, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). As an IRA member, she took part in the theft of paintings worth IR£8 million, a bomb attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station using a hijacked helicopter, and developed a rocket launcher and an explosive.
Paul "Dingus" Magee is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. After serving a prison sentence in the Republic of Ireland, Magee fled to England where he was imprisoned after killing a policeman in 1992. He was repatriated to the Republic of Ireland as part of the Northern Ireland peace process before being released from prison in 1999, and subsequently avoided extradition back to Northern Ireland to serve his sentence for killing the member of the SAS.
Manus Canning was an Irish republican politician and paramilitary.
The Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape occurred on 31 October 1973 when three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, Ireland, by boarding a hijacked helicopter that briefly landed in the prison's exercise yard. The escape made headlines around the world and was an embarrassment to the Irish coalition government of the time, led by Fine Gael's Liam Cosgrave, which was criticised by opposition party Fianna Fáil. A manhunt involving twenty thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána was launched for the escapees, one of whom, Seamus Twomey, was not recaptured until December 1977. The Wolfe Tones wrote a song celebrating the escape called "The Helicopter Song", which topped the Irish popular music charts.
Thomas Niedermayer, OBE was a German industrialist who was kidnapped and killed by the Provisional IRA in December 1973. Niedermayer was the managing director of the Grundig factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The Balcombe Street siege was an incident involving members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and London's Metropolitan Police lasting from 6 to 12 December 1975. The siege ended with the surrender of the four IRA members and the release of their two hostages. The events were televised and watched by millions.