Father Patrick Ryan is an IrishCatholic priest who left the Pallottine order in 1973 after refusing a transfer to a parish church in England. In 1988 Ryan was accused by British authorities of involvement in Provisional Irish Republican Army activity, and was the subject of two unsuccessful extradition requests. Ryan denied the accusation in an interview with The Tipperary Star, saying that he had raised money both inside and outside Europe for victims on the nationalist side in the Troubles of Northern Ireland. But Ryan insisted that he had "never bought explosives for the IRA or anybody else", and had never been requested by the paramilitary group to do so. In an interview with the BBC broadcast in 2019, Ryan admitted that he was "one hundred percent" involved in IRA bomb-making.
Early life
Ryan was born in 1930 in Rossmore, County Tipperary, one of six children in a farming family. He attended the Pallotine College in Thurles, being ordained in 1954. He worked on the missions in the diocese of Mbulu in Tanzania, and also in London.
IRA activity
On 1 May 1988, three off-duty British servicemen were killed in the Netherlands. On 30 June 1988, acting on a tip-off, Belgian police went to the home of an IRA sympathiser and arrested Ryan, who was believed to be acting as quartermaster of the IRA active service unit in Belgium. Upon his arrest, the police seized a quantity of bomb-making equipment and manuals, and a large sum of foreign currency. The British authorities provided substantial evidence in support of a request for Ryan's extradition from Belgium to face charges in Britain. Legal argument between the two countries ensued and, following a hunger strike in protest against his possible extradition to Britain, Ryan was, after a court ruling, instead deported to the Republic of Ireland. On 30 November 1988, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain was in breach of European law for permitting the detention for up to a week of people suspected of connections with terrorist groups. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reacted angrily to the court ruling and to Britain's failure to secure the extradition of Fr Patrick Ryan, who was wanted on charges of helping the outlawed IRA. Thatcher told the House of Commons: "We shall consider the judgment carefully and also the human rights of the victims and potential victims of terrorism."
Extradition demand
Upon his transfer to Ireland, Britain formally demanded Ryan's extradition. On 29 November 1988, Conservative MPMichael Mates called at PMQs for the immediate extradition of this "terrorist". Thatcher responded: The next day in parliament, LabourMPTony Benn raised with the Speaker the following point of order: Michael Mates MP was the next to speak:
Extradition denial
On 1 December 1988, the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, asserted that the extradition paperwork sent to Ireland was in order and the government's claim to have Ryan extradited should be acceded to. However, Fr Ryan said that he would rather die than face a British tribunal as he believed Irish people could never receive justice through the British legal system. The controversy was heightened by the publication of a letter in The Guardian of 7 December 1988 from a British diplomat accusing Thatcher of "double standards on terrorism" for insisting on Fr Ryan's extradition while failing to pursue the extradition of the Coventry Four from South Africa four years earlier. The following week, amid exchanges in the House of Commons, opposition leaderNeil Kinnock, said Thatcher "blew" the possibility of Fr Ryan's extradition by her "performance." On 13 December 1988, the Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, announced in Dáil Éireann that the serious charges levelled against Ryan should be investigated by a court in Ireland and, because of prejudicial remarks made in the House of Commons, Fr Ryan could not expect to receive a fair trial in Britain. In October 1989, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland announced that he had decided not to initiate proceedings against Father Patrick Ryan.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Ryan was asked if he was involved in any of the incidents of which Thatcher accused him, to which he responded "I would say most of them. One way or another, yes I had a hand in most them - yes, was right". He stated that his only regret about his contribution to the Brighton hotel bombing, which killed 5 people, was that "I wasn't even more effective... I would like to have been much more effective, but we didn't do too badly".
