Seamus McGrane died from a suspected heart attack while serving an 11½-year sentence for directing terrorism

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

One of the founders of the Real IRA, who planned a bomb attack during Prince Charles’s visit to Ireland in 2015, has died in prison.

Seamus McGrane died from a suspected heart attack while serving an 11½-year sentence for directing terrorism, the Irish Times has reported.

McGrane (64) from Co Louth in the Irish Republic, was recorded discussing Real IRA activities including the attack planned for Prince Charles’s trip to Ireland.

The Prince’s tour included a visit to the spot in Co Sligo where the Provisional IRA murdered Lord Louis Mountbatten and three others in 1979.

Real IRA founder guilty of bomb plan during Prince Charles visit Read more

McGrane was only the second person to be convicted of directing terrorism in the Irish Republic. The first was Michael McKevitt, who was jailed for 20 years in 2003.

McGrane was one of the dissident republicans in the Provisional IRA who led a walkout from the organisation’s “army convention” in October 1997. Alongside McKevitt – the brother-in-law of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands – McGrane founded the hardline anti-ceasefire Real IRA.

His trial in 2017 heard that McGrane held discussions in a pub called The Coachman’s Inn early in 2015 with an IRA operative, Donal Ó Coisdealbha. Irish police had installed listening devices that secretly recorded McGrane talking about terrorist strategies.

McGrane told Ó Coisdealbha the target was to have “military significance” and referred to someone “coming on the 19th” – the same day Prince Charles arrived in Ireland.

McGrane was arrested six days before the planned attack.

When McGrane’s home and land linked to him in counties Louth and Wexford were searched, police found what the judge described as “a veritable arsenal of weapons and explosives”, including detonators, ammunition and mortars.