The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The various components of the INLA had degenerated into drug-dealing, something which had always been anathema to the Provos, and racketeering of all kinds. Torture was commonly used. A member of one INLA splinter group, the Irish Revolutionary Brigade, boasted of using a bolt-cutter to lop off a man’s fingers before he murdered him because he ‘wanted to give him a hard death’. An autopsy revealed that he had forced another of his victims to eat his own fingers before killing him. The leader of this wing, Dessie O’Hare, who became nationally known as the ‘Border Fox’, is now in Portlaoise jail following a notorious kidnapping in 1987. A prominent Dublin dentist, John O’Grady, was captured by his gang and his fingertips were hacked off with a hammer and chisel for inclusion with a ransom note.