Thomas McMahon (Irish republican)

Thomas McMahon (b. 1948 in Monaghan Town, County Monaghan, Ireland) is a former volunteer in the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and was one of the IRA's most experienced bomb-makers.^[1]

McMahon was convicted of the murder of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma and three others at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in the West of Ireland.^[2]

He planted a bomb in Shadow V, a 27 ft fishing boat belonging to Mountbatten 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."^[3]

McMahon was arrested by the Garda (the Republic of Ireland's police force) two hours before the bomb detonated, having been initially stopped on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle.^[3]

He was tried for the murders in the Republic of Ireland, and convicted by forensic evidence supplied by Dr James O'Donovan that showed flecks of paint from the boat and traces of nitroglycerine on his clothes.^[1]. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder on 23 November 1979, but was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.^[4]

After his release, Toby Harnden in Bandit Country reported that McMahon was holding a tricolour in the first rank of the IRA colour party at a 1998 IRA meeting in Cullyhanna.^[5] However according to a BBC report, McMahon has said that he had severed his links with the IRA in 1990.^[2]

He has twice refused to meet Paul Maxwell's father, John, who has sought him out to explain the reasons for his son's murder. In a May 2011 interview for The Telegraph, he stated:

• I would like some kind of explanation from him in relation to his actions.” Furthermore, he revealed that his son’s killer has snubbed two requests for a meeting.

• I’ve made two approaches to McMahon, the first through a priest, who warned me in advance that he thought there wouldn’t be any positive response. And there wasn’t. I have some reservations about meeting him, obviously – it might work out in such a way that I would regret having made the contact. On the other hand, if we met and I could even begin to understand his motivation. If we could meet on some kind of a human level, a man to man level, it could help me come to terms with it. But that might be very optimistic. McMahon knows the door is open at this end.

• I think I would put a question to him directly, along the lines of...’If I had killed his son, for whatever reason, how would he feel about it? Would he be capable of putting himself in my shoes, to look at it from my angle?’ I’d be interested to know how he would reply to that.

He likewise refused requests from Katchbull's twin brother, who lost an eye in the same explosion. The latter however has forgiven McMahon and other members of the IRA who committed the murders.

As of 2011, McMahon lives with his wife Rose in a hillside bungalow in Lisanisk, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan. He has two grown sons.

References

• [1]
• http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/mountbatten-murder-suspects-on-leaked-list-475940.html