Brendan McFarlane

Brendan McFarlane (born 1951) is an Irish republican activist.

Born into a Roman Catholic family, he was brought up in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, Northern Ireland.

At 16, he left Belfast to train as a priest in a north Wales seminary.

He joined the Provisional IRA in 1969.

McFarlane was brought up in a strongly religious Catholic family in the republican Ardoyne area of North Belfast.

He served as an altar boy at the local church, and at the age of 17 joined a missionary school in Wales, where he began training to become a priest.

McFarlane joined the Provisional IRA when he was 18 years old, following the outbreak of The Troubles, after he had witnessed the violent disturbances first-hand in 1969.

The IRA killed 88 Protestant civilians in similar attacks in 1974–76, in reprisal for loyalist attacks on Catholics, which killed 250 civilians in the same period.

In 1976, McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Bayardo Bar attack on Aberdeen Street in the Protestant Shankill Road district of Belfast, which killed five people (three men and two women) and injured 60 more on 13 August 1975.

According to journalist Peter Taylor, the attack was carried out by the IRA in retaliation for the UVF's ambush of the Dublin-based Miami Showband on 31 July 1975 which had resulted in the shooting deaths of three bandmembers.

One of the five people killed in the Bayardo attack was UVF man, Hugh Harris.

McFarlane attempted to escape from the Maze Prison dressed as a priest in 1978.

When the bid failed, McFarlane's Special Category Status was withdrawn, and he joined the dirty protest in the H-Blocks.

His nickname "Bik" was acquired after the name of a famous Biscuit company MacFarlane Lang, now known as United Biscuits.

Fellow prisoner and author of Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike, Richard O'Rawe, described McFarlane as "six feet tall and full of bonhomie", a "great singer" possessing a "striking character".

O'Rawe also said that McFarlane was an avid supporter of Gaelic football.

The kidnap was one of spate of kidnappings and robberies ordered by the IRA Army Council in the early 1980s to raise funds.

Tidey was taking his 13-year-old daughter to school when he stopped at what he believed to be a Garda Síochána checkpoint.

A gun was put to his head and he was bundled into a waiting car.

A few days later his photograph was sent to Associated British Foods, and this was followed by a phone call demanding an IR£5 million ransom.

He was Provisional IRA Officer Commanding in the Maze during the 1981 Irish hunger strike in which 10 republicans died.

He took over from Bobby Sands in March 1981.

Asked why, Sands is said to have replied: "Because you will let me die."

He later described 1981 as, "probably the worst year of my life. Despite the political gains, the loss of that year is always with me."

McFarlane went on to lead the Maze Prison escape, the mass break-out of 38 republican prisoners from the Maze in 1983 in which a prison officer died of a heart attack.

Fifteen IRA men were caught in the vicinity of the prison, four were captured later that day, 19 got away, with three never being recaptured.

Immediately following the escape, McFarlane and other prisoners commandeered a remote farmhouse near Dromore, County Down, and held the family inside hostage.

Although he took a map and compass, and other items from the premises, none of the family members, which included two small children and a baby, were harmed.

He and the other former escapees made their way across the Irish border and went on the run.

After the break-out, McFarlane resumed his IRA activities.

In December 1983, he is alleged to have kidnapped supermarket executive Don Tidey in a bid to ransom him to raise money for the IRA.

The Gardaí eventually tracked Tidey and his kidnappers – four in all – to Derrada Wood in Ballinamore, County Leitrim on 16 December 1983.

In the subsequent shoot-out, following which Tidey made his escape, a trainee Garda and an Irish Army soldier (Gary Sheehan and Patrick Kelly) were killed.

Tidey's kidnappers escaped.

On 16 January 1986, McFarlane was recaptured in the Netherlands along with fellow escapee Gerry Kelly, and subsequently extradited to Northern Ireland, and released on parole from the Maze in 1997.

By 1993 he had become the longest serving prisoner in the Maze.

In a 1995 House of Lords debate, Gerry Fitt, formerly the SDLP MP for West Belfast, alleged that McFarlane had machine-gunned three pedestrians who were passing by the Bayardo as it was blown up.

The bar was attacked because it was allegedly frequented by members of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

The IRA initially denied it had carried out the attack.

The attack occurred against a background of severe sectarian violence.