BRUM BOMB SUSPECTS NAMED 44 YEARS ON
Reporter confronts ‘IRA man’
TWO new suspects in the Birmingham IRA bombings are named in an ITV documentary to be shown tonight.
Twenty-one people died and 220 more were injured when two bombs exploded in crowded pubs in Birmingham city centre in November 1974.
Six men were wrongly jailed for the atrocity but were freed in 1991. Now ITV is naming James Francis Gavin and another man, whose name the Daily Star cannot print, as the prime suspects who planted the bombs at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the
Town.
Denied
James Gavin died in 2002. In 1977 he murdered a suspected IRA informant and was given life in jail. He was quizzed by police in the early 1990s about the bombings but refused to answer.
The other suspect is confronted by reporter John Ware in his local supermarket. He admits he was convicted of IRA offences in the mid-1970s but denies being the 1974 pub bomber. The programme reveals that in his West Midlands Police interview, the suspect said: “I was told there was something going to happen but I didn’t know there was going to be people killed.”
In the documentary, Julie Hambleton, whose eldest sister Maxine was killed in the blast at the Tavern in the Town, says: “What do I want? Me, personally, I want the b ****** s who killed my sister and the other 20 to be brought to justice. Short and simple.”
The Hunt For The Birmingham Bombers is on ITV at 10.45pm tonight.
OTV DEMAND: Julie VICTIM: Her sister Maxine