Terrorist’s ‘ best guerrilla army ever’ boast
A TERRORIST suspected of carrying out the Birmingham atrocity remains unrepentant over his role in the IRA – boastfully describing it as the ‘greatest guerrilla army the world has ever known’.
Michael Hayes, 70, was dramatically named last month by a witness – ‘instructed by the head of the IRA’ – as one of the men responsible for the blasts which left 21 dead.
But Hayes last night said of the bombings: ‘I didn’t do it. I don’t care who believes it or not.
‘I’ll probably go down in history as the perpetrator but I’m not. I know it and those people that know me know I wouldn’t do it,’ he told ITV News. The grandfather, who lives alone in Dublin, praised the IRA as the best guerrilla army ever and said it should not have laid down its arms. He told the Daily Mail that West Midlands Police had visited him in the run-up to the inquest hearings.
Retired Hayes, who worked as a toolsetter in Birmingham at the time of the blasts, said he has paid little attention to the inquest. He admitted he had been an explosives expert but insisted he ‘did not build’ the bombs in Birmingham.
He said it was inexcusable to have left devices in two pubs packed with customers and claimed he was ‘horrified’ by the loss of life. He repeated an earlier claim that he had defused a third device left on Birmingham’s Hagley Road when the extent of the carnage became clear.
Hayes said: ‘The war is over – the fighting is over. But I never surrendered. I would never surrender. I would sooner die fighting, but I’m an old man now. We should have finished the war – win, lose or draw.’
In an interview with the BBC in 2017 the father-of-three claimed the Birmingham bombers had planned to give a warning half an hour before the blasts, but lost crucial time because two phone boxes were out of order or occupied. The eventual phone call was received just minutes before the first explosion.
Hayes said only: ‘The phones were checked that day.’ He was named by the witness alongside Seamus McLoughlin, Mick Murray and James Gavin – all now dead.
Asked if he wished to apologise to the families of victims, he said: ‘I absolutely and sincerely commiserate with them and I will take full collective responsibility for all IRA operations.
‘I don’t excuse the war in England. I can’t – it was fighting behind enemy lines. But to kill civilians... that’s unadulterated murder.’