Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
EX-IRA informer drowns in swimming pool in Jamaica
O’callaghan 62yr-old sat said he aborted on Army Council Diana murder bid with Mcguinness
A FORMER top IRA man who claimed he aborted a murder bid on Princess Diana has been found dead in Jamaica.
Sean O’callaghan, 62, who left the Provos to become an unpaid spy for Irish and British security forces, died in a swimming pool incident on Wednesday.
It is understood he had been on holiday visiting his daughter, but it is not known if he had been ill.
From Tralee in Co Kerry, O’callaghan joined the IRA aged 17 and rose through the ranks to sit on the Army Council with Martin Mcguinness in the 1980s.
But throughout that time he was working as an agent for the Irish
State.
He turned his back on his terror masters in the 1990s shortly before the Good Friday Agreement. At the time he said he was fully aware the Provos wanted him dead and remained watchful of his personal safety.
He once told a security source in Belfast: “They want me dead. That’s their job. I plan to keep going – that’s my job.
“We all know the rules and I keep a close watch on my personal security.
“It’s not as if they will creep up behind me and shoot me in the back – they are angry enough to shoot me in the head, face on.
“But I did what I knew was right – and they know it
too so we will just wait and see.” O’callaghan told his handlers in the 1980s he had aborted a plan to kill Prince Charles and Princess Diana at a charity event they were attending in 1983.
The Royal couple had been due at a pop concert at the Dominion Theatre in London.
A warning was telephoned to gardai in Dublin and Charles and Diana were removed from the building by their security team to safety.
O’callaghan claimed he had aborted the bombing but never divulged why.
After he left the IRA he wrote the best-selling book, The Informer, telling of his days as a Provo commanding officer. Following its publication the IRA put him on a hit list and vowed to “neutralise” him and leave his body as a warning to others. But O’callaghan carried on with his wish to atone for his activities as a young man and became a vital, but unpaid, Garda informer. He also provided a vast pool of information for the British Government.
O’callaghan was jailed for life in 1990 after walking into an English police station to confess to the murder of UDR Greenfinch Eva Martin in May 1974.
She died in an attack on an Army base at Clogher, Co Tyrone.
He also confessed to the murder of Catholic RUC Special Branch detective Peter Flanagan, 47, in the same year.
O’callaghan shot the policeman repeatedly with a handgun in Broderick’s pub in Omagh, Co Tyrone.
He later said: “I opened the door of the pub to check he was there, closed it and quickly reopened it.
“We re-entered and started shooting Peter Flanagan. He attempted to escape. We followed him towards the toilet and shot him dead.”
O’callaghan was jailed for life for the murders and was given another 539 years for other offences.
He was freed under a Royal Prerogative of Mercy in 1997.