Stoke Newington Road lorry bomb

On 14 November 1992, 3.2 tonnes of explosives was discovered during a routine check on a lorry travelling on Stoke Newington Road, part of the A10, one of the main routes between London and the north. The Volvo lorry was stopped by police around 1 am; the occupants fled. Constable Raymond Hall - a former Royal Engineer soldier and Falklands War veteran - chased the suspects to a residential street, where he was shot twice by one of them. Shortly afterwards police arrested one man, Irish lorry driver Patrick Kelly, a member of the Provisional IRA, who was alleged to have been driving the lorry.[1]

Stoke Newington Road lorry bomb incident
Part of the Troubles
LocationShacklewell, London, United Kingdom
Date14 November 1992
1:00 am (UTC)
Attack type
Shooting
Deaths0
Injured1
PerpetratorProvisional Irish Republican Army

The large amount of explosives, which was bigger than that used in the Baltic Exchange bombing earlier that year, could have caused "massive destruction".[2] Investigations found detonation material inside the lorry as well.[3] Officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch were unable to determine the intended target, although it occurred on the day of the Lord Mayor's Show.

Arrests and convictions

In October 1993, Kelly was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to cause explosions, and for the attempted murder of Hall. Kelly was suffering from skin cancer whilst in prison, but was denied medical treatment during his time in three prisons in England and Northern Ireland. Campaigners - which included MP Jeremy Corbyn - won a case in 1996 to transfer him to a prison in Portlaoise in the Republic of Ireland, where under Irish jurisdiction he received medical treatment for his serious illness. The case was seen as an example of British human rights violations of Irish prisoners.[4] Despite treatment Kelly died on 11 June 1997. He was buried in County Laois in the Republic and his funeral attended by many people from South Armagh.[5]

In 1994, English IRA member Patrick Hayes, during sentencing at the Old Bailey for the 1993 Harrods bombing and an attempted bombing in Canary Wharf,[6] said that he was the driver in the Stoke Newington Road incident and that Kelly was innocent, convicted because of his Irish nationality.[7] Hayes was released in 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.[8]

See also

References
  1. "Bomb rips Northern Ireland town, London cache found".
  2. "Man gets 25 years for IRA bomb plot: Judges tells court that terrorist". 20 October 1993.
  3. Jones, Ian (31 October 2016). "London: Bombed Blitzed and Blown Up: The British Capital Under Attack Since 1867". Frontline Books – via Google Books.
  4. http://www.connollyassociation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/04-Jun-Jul96.pdf
  5. "AN PHOBLACHT/REPUBLICAN NEWS". republican-news.org.
  6. "Court told of booby trap on IRA van bomb: Canary Wharf device 'would". 16 April 1994.
  7. "IRA member says wrong man jailed for bombing: Man admits link to lorry". 10 May 1994.
  8. "The Provisional IRA in Stoke Newington". 17 September 2015.

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