An Irish Republican Army member who was convicted of murdering a nun and three police officers has died at the age of 59.
Tarlac Connolly died on Dec. 10 and was buried Thursday at St. John’s Cemetery Middletown in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Connolly had been sentenced to life in prison for a 1990 bombing, which killed three Royal Ulster Constabulary officers and a nun.
Constable William Hanson, Reserve Constable Joshua Willis, and Reserve Constable David Sterritt were killed instantly when a 1,000-pound bomb hidden in a culvert was detonated as their unmarked patrol car passed near it, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
Also caught in the explosion was Sister Catherine Dunne, who was traveling in another car. She was the only nun killed during the Northern Ireland conflict, which lasted for some three decades. Another passenger in Dunne’s car, a social worker, was seriously wounded in the attack.
The detonation flung the vehicle the officers were driving into a field, leaving behind a gaping crater that was 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep.
The IRA said at the time that Dunne’s death had not been caused by “accidental or terrorist detonation of the device, but by a set of unforeseen and fluke circumstances.”
Pope John Paul II wrote a message that was read at the nun’s funeral. He called on all parties to acknowledge “the grievous injustice and futility of terrorism.”
Connolly was freed from prison in 2000 as part of the Good Friday agreement, which saw the release of hundreds of pro-British loyalists and pro-Irish Republican paramilitaries.
After his release, Connolly was said to have been involved in community projects across Armagh, a town of about 14,000. He also campaigned for his cousin and fellow IRA member Peter Ryan, who was shot and killed by a British Army Special Air Service unit in 1991.
He called for justice in Ryan’s death and said that his “concern is not that it was a shoot-to-kill. They were involved in a war situation and that was the consequences of war. Soldiers do what soldiers do.
“Our concern is that our relatives were dragged off the road wounded after this incident and burned, and that breaks the Geneva Convention and is a war crime,” Connolly said. “We want the person who took that decision to face a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.”
In 2017, investigators with the Police Service of Northern Ireland arrested two men, aged 55 and 53, associated with the bombing for which Connolly was originally convicted. They were said to have been acting on information provided by a former senior IRA man who had become a drug dealer.
Connolly was married with six children.
