Writer claims ‘at least six people’ in Mountbatten assassination unit in 1979
IT WAS claimed at the weekend that the investigation into the murder of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma in Mullaghmore over 40 years ago is still an “active” case and that at least six people were involved in the assassination. Lord Mountbatten, who spent his summer holidays every year at Classiebawn Castle in the north Sligo resort, was killed along 14-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull, the dowager Lady Brabourne and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell from Enniskillen (who worked as a boat boy for Lord Mountbatten) when the IRA exploded a bomb on his boat off Mullaghmore Head on August 27, 1979.
The IRA claimed responsibility for the killings but only one person, Thomas MacMahon from Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, who was alleged to have made the bomb, was ever convicted of the murders.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1979 but was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday agreement
A second man, Francis McGirl, from Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, was arrested along with him and was also charged but was acquitted.
But in an article in last weekend’s Sunday Times, it was claimed that “at least six people, several female, formed the assassination unit”.
The article was written by Andrew Lownie, who is the author of a book called ‘The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves’.
He also claimed that “the authorities know exactly who they are, but it has been deemed politically expedient not to pursue inquiries”. He also said that a garda had told him that “the murder is still an ‘active’ case, which is why no files can be released on it”.
Lownie also quoted “well-connected” Northern Ireland journalist Martin Dillon as saying that “the garda never closed the Mountbatten file because they believed it was a wider conspiracy and they were hoping someone would rat out the people up the chain of command who ordered it”.
The claims are made in the course of a lengthy article headlined: “Who really killed Mountbatten?” in which Lownie said: “It remains an unsolved case that is ripe for speculation. Most of the documents relating to Mountbatten’s death remain closed and my freedom of information requests have been refused, most of them citing national security. One has to ask why? How was the outrage allowed to happen? Was the IRA really behind it?”
He said that “one of the great mysteries was why Mounbatten kept returning to Mullaghmore, a few miles south of the border”.
“The rule was that no members of the royal family should ever go over to the Republic, but he holidayed there for 30 years after his wife Edwina, inherited Classiebawn Castle from her father.”
Lownie said that “everyone knew he was a target” and that one time IRA chief of staff Ruairi Ó Bradaigh claimed he vetoed an IRA attack on Mountbatten in 1960 or 1961. And Lownie wrote that in August 1978 “an attempt to shoot him on his boat was aborted only when choppy seas prevented the sniper lining up his target”.
“The same year a loosened bung was found on Shadow V”. The article concludes: “Many of the government files, which might provide insight and explanation, remain closed or were destroyed. The compromises of the Good Friday agreement mean we may never get the answer.”