Informer Sean O’Callaghan found dead

Posted by Jim on August 26, 2017

A self-confessed IRA informer has been found dead in a swimming pool in
Jamaica.

Sean O’Callaghan, who became a darling of the mainstream media for his
far-fetched accounts of IRA activity and anti-republican political
commentary, was aged 63. His cause of death remains unknown, although
his family have said they believe he drowned after getting into
difficulty while swimming.

O’Callaghan, from County Kerry, joined the Provisional IRA in the
mid-1970s. By 1976, aged 21, he ended his involvement with the
Provisional IRA and moved to London. But by the end of the decade, he
had returned as an informer and started spying for the Irish Garda
police.

In 1985, O’Callaghan murdered another informer in Kerry, John Corcoran,
which he subsequently admitted but later denied. It is thought he used
Corcoran as a scapegoat in order to protect himself and ward off
suspicions that he was the informer.

Apparently haunted by his actions, in 1988 O’Callaghan walked into a
police station in England and confessed to IRA involvement. He was
jailed for life, but was freed by a royal pardon in 1996.

In recent years, he invented increasingly absurd tales of his IRA
involvement for attention and cash. Among these was the claim he
thwarted a plot to assassinate the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana in
the 1980s.

His wilder inventions and commentary on the IRA were given front-page
prominence. More recently, he featured in the British tabloids as a
critic of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell.

All this time, he battled depression and alcoholism. In an interview two
years ago O’Callaghan spoke of the threat he lived under. “I’m sure the
Provos and dissident republicans would shoot me in an instant if they
got the chance, so I keep looking in front of me as well as behind me,”
he said. “That’s just how it is.”

Right-wing extremist Ruth Dudley-Edwards, a friend of Callaghan’s,
explained how he dodged the IRA death sentence for being an informer.

“He always moved around. He had no fixed address or credit card. He left
no trail,” she said.

“He received warnings from the police that he was under threat. After a
certain period, he likely ceased to be a target for the Provos but the
dissidents wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him.”

Former IRA prisoner and writer Anthony McIntyre rejected Callaghan’s
depiction of himself and described him as a “calculating, self-serving
and manipulative man.”

“I don’t buy the line that he had some sort of ‘Road to Damascus’
conversion and was turned because of the horrors of the past. Most
people work for the security services for money or to save their own
skin,” he said.