Patrick Magee (Irish republican)

Patrick Joseph Magee (born 1951) is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitary, best known for planting a bomb in the Brighton Grand Hotel targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet, which killed five people. He is sometimes referred to as the "Brighton bomber".

Patrick Magee was born in Belfast and moved with his family to Norwich when he was four years old. He returned to Belfast at the age of 20 in 1971 and later joined the Provisional IRA.

In June 1973, he was interned during Operation Demetrius. He was released in November 1975.

The plot to bomb the Grand Hotel had started as an act of revenge for the stance the British government had taken over the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

Magee had stayed in the hotel under the false name of Roy Walsh four weeks previously, during the weekend of 14–17 September 1984. He planted the bomb, with a long-delay timer, in the bathroom wall of his room, number 629. The bomb exploded at 2:54 a.m. on 12 October 1984, killing five people and injuring 34. He was arrested in the Queen's Park area of Glasgow on 22 June 1985 with other members of an active service unit, including Martina Anderson, while planning other bombings. At his trial in September 1986 he received eight life sentences, with the judge branding him "a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity." While in prison, he completed a PhD examining the representation of Irish republicans in "Troubles" fiction. In August 1997, he married for a second time.

...
Wikipedia