Former IRA bomber Dolours Price found dead in Dublin

REVEALED: FORMER IRA bomber Dolours Price has died in Co Dublin.

The 61-year-old was found dead on Thursday morning in her apartment in Malahide, north Co Dublin of a suspected drug overdose.

The mother of two had been battling for a number of years addictions to alcohol and drugs.

Her family are expected to release a statement later on Thursday.

Her sister Marion Price McGlinchey is currently charged awaiting trial over a Real IRA show of strength in Derry/Londonderry.

However, she is currently being treated in a Belfast hospital and her lawyer have argued that because of her ill health she is unfit to stand trial.

Dolours Price’s family are expected later to reveal her funeral arrangements.

It is not yet known whether she will be buried in Dublin or Belfast.

A source said: “It will be interesting to see if Gerry Adams goes to the funeral or if he is told to stay away.

“The other question is whether Marion Price will be given compassionate bail to attend the funeral.

“If it is in Dublin, it is doubtful whether a court in Belfast will grant her bail because the police will no doubt object.”

Three years ago Dolours Price appeared at Newry Magistrates Court charged with stealing a bottle of Vodka from a local off licence.

However, she later beat the charges.

In February 2010, it was reported that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, who were allegedly killed by the IRA and whose bodies have not been found.

At the same time, Price claimed that Gerry Adams had been her “Officer Commanding” when she was in the IRA.

Adams, who has never admitted to being a member of the IRA, denied her charge.

IRA Disappeared victim Jean McConville

Price also admitted to driving the kidnapped Jean McConville, accused by the IRA of being an informer, to the place where she was killed in 1972. She claimed that the killing was ordered by Adams, who denied that Price’s story was true.

Oral historians at Boston College interviewed both Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006.

The two former IRA members spoke on condition that the tapes not be released in their lifetimes. In May, 2011, British police subpoenaed the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.

In June 2011, the college filed a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college stated that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.”

In July 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors asked a judge to require the college to release the tapes in order to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom.

On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed with the government’s position that the subpoena should not be quashed.

On October 17, 2012, the United States Supreme Court temporarily blocked Boston College from turning over the interview tapes.

Now that Price has died, there could be little to stop the tapes from being handed over to the PSNI.

Price became involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

She participated in a car bombing of the Old Bailey on 8 March 1973.

The explosion injured over 200 people and likely caused one person’s death of heart failure.

The two sisters were arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they were boarding a flight back to the Republic.

They were tried and convicted at the Great Hall on Winchester Castle on 14 November after a six-hour discussion by a jury. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which was to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence was eventually reduced to 20 years.

Dolours Price served seven years of her sentence for her part in the IRA car bombing during which time she immediately went on a hunger strike in a campaign to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland.

The hunger strike lasted over 200 days, because the hunger strikers were force-fed by prison authorities.

The force-feeding ended after the death of another hunger striker, Michael Gaughan, in June 1974.

As part of the campaign, her father, Albert Price, contested West Belfast at the UK General Election of February 1974 receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%)[4] The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly were moved to Northern Irish prisons in 1975. This was a benefit of negotiations that occurred during a British-IRA truce.

In 1980 Price received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and was freed on humanitarian grounds suffering from anorexia nervosa in 1981.

Dolours Price, along with her sister Marian, had remained active politically.

In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claimed that they had been threatened by their former comrades in Sinn Féin for speaking out against the Good Friday Agreement.

Price also regularly contributed to the on-line journal The Blanket, which was edited by Anthony McIntyre and his wife, Carrie Twomey until it ceased publication in 2008.

After her release in 1980, she married Irish actor Stephen Rea who was hired to speak the words of Gerry Adams when Sinn Féin was under a broadcasting ban.

In 2001, Price was arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions.

She pleaded guilty and was fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Price and Rea divorced in 2003. They have two sons together.