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Sean O'Callaghan (born 26 January 1954) is a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Between 1979 and 1988, he was also an informant for the Garda Síochána's Special Branch. In 1988, he resigned from the IRA and voluntarily surrendered to British prosecution. Following his release from jail, O'Callaghan published his memoirs, ''The Informer: The True Life Story of One Man's War on Terrorism''. ==Early life== O'Callaghan was born on 26 January 1954 into a republican family in Tralee, County Kerry. His paternal grandfather had taken the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. O'Callaghan's father, who had served in the IRA, had been interned during World War II at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare.〔 O'Callaghan (1998), pages 8-9.〕 By the late 1960s, the teenaged O'Callaghan had ceased practising the Catholic religion, regarding himself as an atheist and a Marxist. He sympathised with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. In 1969, violent attacks were perpetrated against civil rights organizers and many other Catholics by unionists. Believing that he would be helping to combat British imperialism, O'Callaghan volunteered for the newly-founded Provisional IRA at the age of 16. Soon afterwards, O'Callaghan was arrested by local Gardaí after he accidentally detonated a small amount of explosives, which caused damage to his parents' house and those of his neighbours. After demanding, and receiving, treatment as a political prisoner, O'Callaghan quietly served his sentence. After becoming a full-time volunteer, O'Callaghan was involved in various IRA operations, including a May 1974 mortar attack on a British army base at Clogher, County Tyrone in which a female "Greenfinch" Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier, Private Eva Martin, was killed. In his memoirs, O'Callaghan wrote that, although some individual UDR soldiers had had links to loyalist paramilitary gangs, he subsequently learned that Private Martin was not one of them. A secondary school teacher, she and her husband had both volunteered for the UDR. It was Martin's husband who found her body on a shattered staircase inside the base.〔O'Callaghan, Sean (1999). ''The Informer''. London: Corgi Books. pp.95–99. ISBN 0-552-14607-2〕 In August 1974, O'Callagan walked into a bar in Omagh, County Tyrone and fatally shot Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan of the RUC Special Branch. D.I. Flanagan, a Catholic, was regarded as a traitor by both the IRA and many local residents. Flanagan was also rumoured, falsely, to have used excessive force while interrogating IRA suspects.〔O'Callaghan, pp.103–113〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sean O'Callaghan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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