Founding member of the Provisional IRA and former Sinn Féin assemblyman John Kelly has died after a long illness.
Born in Belfast, he joined the IRA in the early 1950s. He was leader of the Provisional IRA during the 1970 Arms Trial which implicated senior members of the Irish Government. Mr Kelly, former taoiseach Charles Haughey, Capt James Kelly, and Belgian businessman Albert Luykx were acquitted of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic for use in Northern Ireland.
Mr Kelly was no longer active in politics, having been de-selected for his assembly seat in Mid-Ulster, and later criticised the party’s decision to embrace policing. Last January, he co-wrote a letter with a former leader of IRA Maze hunger strikers, Brendan Hughes, under the umbrella group No More Lies, which was fiercely critical of the Sinn Féin leadership. It questioned whether threats said to have emanated from dissident republicans against Sinn Féin leaders, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, were in fact genuine.
“In our view there are threats being made. But they are coming from Sinn Féin and are directed against republicans who seek a wider debate on the policing matter,” they wrote.
The Irish Times report: Former Provisional IRA leader Kelly dies; also, BBC, UTV.
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