Thomas McMahon

Thomas McMahon (Irish: Tomás Mac Mathúna [ [http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identity/names.htm "Your name in Irish - both surname and christian"] Hogan Stand (2007), Accessed 10 November, 2007] ] ) (b. 1948 in Monaghan Town, County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland) was a member of the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). McMahon was convicted of the murder of Lord Mountbatten of Burma and three others at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/08/nmoun108.html "Republican trained by Libyans"] "BBC News", 8 August, 1998. Accessed 26 January, 2007]

McMahon was a member of an IRA unit which planted a bomb in "Shadow V", a 27ft fishing boat belonging to Lord Mountbatten of Burma at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, near Donegal Bay. Lord Mountbatten was killed in the bomb blast along with three other people:
* The Dowager Baroness Brabourne, Mountbatten's elder daughter's mother-in-law (aged 83).
* The Hon. Nicholas Knatchbull, his elder daughter's fourth son (aged 14).
* Paul Maxwell, from County Fermanagh who was working as a crew member (aged 15).

The IRA admitted responsibility for the act in a statement released immediately afterwards. In the statement from the organisation they said: "This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country." [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/27/newsid_2511000/2511545.stm "BBC News On This Day"] ]

McMahon was arrested by Irish police two hours before the bomb detonated, having been initially stopped on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in the Republic of Ireland on 23 November 1979, but was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. [http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5544 "1979 : IRA member sentenced for Mountbatten's assassination"] "This Day in History". Accessed 26 January, 2007]

After his release, Toby Harnden in "Bandit Country" reports that McMahon was holding a tricolour in the first rank of the IRA colour party at a 1998 IRA meeting in Cullyhanna. [Toby Harnden, "Bandit Country -The IRA and South Armagh", Hodder & Stoughton, London 1999, ISBN 0-340-71736-X] However according to a BBC report, McMahon has said that he had severed his links with the IRA in 1990. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/08/nmoun108.html "Republican trained by Libyans"] "BBC News", 8 August, 1998. Accessed 26 January, 2007]

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