Brendan Hughes

Brendan Hughes
Early photograph of Brendan Hughes
Nickname(s)	"The Dark"
Born	16 October 1948 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died	16 February 2008 (aged 59) Belfast
Allegiance	Irish Republican Army Provisional IRA
Rank	Officer Commanding
Battles/wars	The Troubles

Brendan Hughes (16 October 1948 – 16 February 2008), also known as "The Dark", was a leading Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He was the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike.

Hughes was born into a republican Catholic family from the Lower Falls Road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a cousin of Charles Hughes, who was the O/C of D Company in the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade during the Falls Curfew, and was shot and killed in March 1971 by the Official Irish Republican Army during a feud between the Provisional and Official IRAs.

Hughes joined the Irish Republican Army in 1969, sided with the Provisional faction in the split of 1969–70, and was "on the run" in Belfast by 1970. From 1970 to 1972 Hughes was involved in a number of attacks on British soldiers and bank robberies to raise funds for the republican movement.

Hughes described his normal day during that period as "you would have had a call house [a safe meeting place] and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float [gone out in a car looking for a British soldier] in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."

As Officer Commanding (OC) of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade, he was the main organiser of Bloody Friday, the biggest bombing attack ever carried out by the organisation in Belfast. On 21 July 1972, the IRA exploded 22 bombs all over the city leaving nine people dead including two British soldiers, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, two teenage boys, and a mother of seven; 130 people were injured. Hughes regarded the operation as a disaster as he explained in the following interview set up by Boston College: