30 years for IRA men

Three Real IRA terrorists were jailed for 30 years each today for planning to recreate what the judge described as another potential Omagh bombing in Britain.

Mr Justice Astill told the three: "Whatever justification you can find in your hearts and minds for the killing and maiming, it's the duty of these courts to reflect the public's revulsion at the suffering and the grief you impose indiscriminately on the innocent."

Michael McDonald, 44, the self-styled number two in the dissident IRA group, Declan Rafferty, 42, and Fintan O'Farrell, 38, stood stony-faced in the dock at top-security Woolwich Crown Court as they were sentenced, then turned and waved defiantly at family and friends in the public gallery.

They had travelled from the Republican hotbed of County Louth to Eastern Europe to negotiate for a massive cache of arms and explosives with Iraqi government officials who turned out to be undercover MI5 agents. The terrorists told the agents they planned to bomb Britain and "bring a smile to your face," the court heard.

The full story of how the would-be bombers planned to terrorise Britain before being trapped by the undercover agents in Eastern Europe was spelled out in detail for the first time today.

Acting on a tip off from a FBI and a British agent in America who had infiltrated the dissident Republican organisation, MI5 set up a sting.

Contact had been made by the agents - posing as representatives of Saddam Hussein - with the press officer in Dublin of the 32 Counties Sovereignty Movement, the political wing of the Real IRA. Eighteen phone calls then passed to and from the British agents and Michael McEvitt, named as the leader of the renegade Republicans who is now under arrest in Ireland. In a series of meetings in Eastern Europe, McEvitt's men set out their plans which were bugged by MI5.

This revealed:

? How the Real IRA is run by an eightstrong "board of directors" headed by McEvitt and McDonald.

? Their determination never to agree to peace in Northern Ireland.

? Their desperate need not only for weaponry but for money.

? How the Real IRA had trusted contacts across Europe for smuggling in massive hoards of guns and explosives.

They drew up a shopping list of 5,000 kilos of plastic explosives which they believed to be more powerful than Semtex, the IRA's traditional favourite weapon, 2,000 electronic detonators, 200 rocket- propelled grenades and booster packs, 500 hand guns and one and half a million dollars.