Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
The IRA ceasefire from 31 August 1994 gave an opportunity to the British to collect intelligence to be used against the snipers.The truce was strongly resented by South Armagh IRA members. During the ceasefire, an alleged member of the Drumintee squad, Kevin Donegan, was arrested by an RUC patrol in relation to the 1994 murder of a postal worker in the course of an armed robbery. When the IRA ended the ceasefire with the bombing of the London Docklands in February 1996, some republicans had already abandoned the organisation, and others had turned to criminal activities.The period after the ceasefire saw little IRA activity in South Armagh.
After two attacks in 1997, a Special Air Service unit captured four men from the sniper team based in the west of the region on 10 April, who were responsible for several deaths. After a brief scuffle, James McArdle, Michael Caraher, Bernard McGinn and Martin Mines were seized at a farm near Freeduff and handed over to the RUC. The British troops were under strict orders to avoid IRA casualties. A Barrett M90 rifle was seized, which forensic and intelligence reports linked only to the 1997 shootings. It was hinted that there was an informer, a suggestion dismissed by the Police Ombudsman report.
McGinn provided the RUC with a lot of information about IRA activities and even betrayed Frank McCabe, the IRA commander behind the sniper campaign,but he eventually withdrew his statement.One of the key players in the British campaign against the South Armagh sniper was Welsh Guards' Captain Rupert Thorneloe, according to the journalist Toby Harnden. Thorneloe worked as an intelligence liaison officer between the 3rd Infantry Brigade and the RUC Special Branch. Thorneloe, who reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was killed in July 2009 by an improvised explosive device during the war in Afghanistan.Another senior figure involved in the British efforts against the sniper squads was SAS Staff Sergeant Gaz Hunter,whose experience in South Armagh dated back to 1975.Despite the sense of relief among British forces after the arrests,there was concern over the other two Barrett rifles still in the possession of the South Armagh Brigade.
One of the IRA volunteers captured, Michael Caraher, was the brother of Fergal Caraher, a Sinn Féin member and IRA volunteer killed by Royal Marines at a checkpoint on 30 December 1990 near Cullyhanna.Michael, also shot and wounded in the same incident, had lost a lung in the aftermath.The Marines involved were tried and acquitted by Lord Chief Justice Hutton.The shooting of Guardsman Daniel Blinco in Crossmaglen took place on the second anniversary of the killing of Fergal Caraher.Michael Caraher was thought to be the shooter in several attacks, but he was indicted only for the case of the maimed constable. He was defended by the solicitor Rosemary Nelson who was later killed by the loyalist organisation Red Hand Defenders.The other three men of the sniper team were convicted in 1999 for six killings, two of them unrelated to the sniping operations (the deaths of two men when one of the team's members, James McArdle, planted the bomb at Canary Wharf in 1996)
The IRA ceasefire from 31 August 1994 gave an opportunity to the British to collect intelligence to be used against the snipers.The truce was strongly resented by South Armagh IRA members. During the ceasefire, an alleged member of the Drumintee squad, Kevin Donegan, was arrested by an RUC patrol in relation to the 1994 murder of a postal worker in the course of an armed robbery. When the IRA ended the ceasefire with the bombing of the London Docklands in February 1996, some republicans had already abandoned the organisation, and others had turned to criminal activities.The period after the ceasefire saw little IRA activity in South Armagh.
After two attacks in 1997, a Special Air Service unit captured four men from the sniper team based in the west of the region on 10 April, who were responsible for several deaths. After a brief scuffle, James McArdle, Michael Caraher, Bernard McGinn and Martin Mines were seized at a farm near Freeduff and handed over to the RUC. The British troops were under strict orders to avoid IRA casualties. A Barrett M90 rifle was seized, which forensic and intelligence reports linked only to the 1997 shootings. It was hinted that there was an informer, a suggestion dismissed by the Police Ombudsman report.
McGinn provided the RUC with a lot of information about IRA activities and even betrayed Frank McCabe, the IRA commander behind the sniper campaign,but he eventually withdrew his statement.One of the key players in the British campaign against the South Armagh sniper was Welsh Guards' Captain Rupert Thorneloe, according to the journalist Toby Harnden. Thorneloe worked as an intelligence liaison officer between the 3rd Infantry Brigade and the RUC Special Branch. Thorneloe, who reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was killed in July 2009 by an improvised explosive device during the war in Afghanistan.Another senior figure involved in the British efforts against the sniper squads was SAS Staff Sergeant Gaz Hunter,whose experience in South Armagh dated back to 1975.Despite the sense of relief among British forces after the arrests,there was concern over the other two Barrett rifles still in the possession of the South Armagh Brigade.
One of the IRA volunteers captured, Michael Caraher, was the brother of Fergal Caraher, a Sinn Féin member and IRA volunteer killed by Royal Marines at a checkpoint on 30 December 1990 near Cullyhanna.Michael, also shot and wounded in the same incident, had lost a lung in the aftermath.The Marines involved were tried and acquitted by Lord Chief Justice Hutton.The shooting of Guardsman Daniel Blinco in Crossmaglen took place on the second anniversary of the killing of Fergal Caraher.Michael Caraher was thought to be the shooter in several attacks, but he was indicted only for the case of the maimed constable. He was defended by the solicitor Rosemary Nelson who was later killed by the loyalist organisation Red Hand Defenders.The other three men of the sniper team were convicted in 1999 for six killings, two of them unrelated to the sniping operations (the deaths of two men when one of the team's members, James McArdle, planted the bomb at Canary Wharf in 1996)
