Bobby Storey - Prison

Prison

On his seventeenth birthday, he was interned and held in Long Kesh for two years, having been arrested 20 times previous to this but being too young for internment. He was in the “Cages” as they were called in October, 1974 when republican prisoners burnt them down. He was released in 1975 but in 1976 was arrested again, charged with blowing up the Skyways Hotel. Held on remand for thirteen months, he was released but was arrested on the day of his trial leaving the court house and charged with a shooting related incident.

As the authorities were unable to convict him, he was released in March 1977, but was arrested again that August, charged with the shooting of two British soldiers. The charges were dropped however that December. Charged again in 1978 with shooting a soldier, he was again placed on remand but again was released in May 1979. Bobby was later arrested in London and charged with conspiring to hijack a helicopter to help Brian Keenan escape from Brixton Prison, but was released in April 1981. That August he was arrested in possession of a rifle after a soldier was shot and sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment.

He was involved in the Maze Prison escape known as the “Great escape” in 1983, when 38 republican prisoners broke out of the H Blocks. Captured, Storey was given an additional seven years. Released in 1994, he was again arrested in 1996 and charged with having information on the Lord Chief Justice. Having spent over twenty years in prison, almost all of it on remand, his final release came in 1998, and he again became involved in developing republican politics and strategy.

On January 11, 2005, Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for South Antrim David Burnside told the British House of Commons under Parliamentary privilege that Storey was head of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army.

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