The remains of an IRA man executed 57 years ago in Belfast have been unearthed from prison for reburial, the North's Prison Service has confirmed. Tom Williams (19) was hanged and buried in Crumlin Road jail after he was convicted of killing an RUC man.
Republicans and relatives have long campaigned for his reburial at Milltown Cemetery on the Falls Road. Williams, a labourer, was hanged on September 2nd, 1942 for the murder of Const Patrick Murphy in west Belfast on Easter Sunday of that year. Const Murphy was shot while giving chase to a group of IRA men who had fired on an RUC car. Williams was injured in the leg and arm when police returned fire.
He was the officer commanding "C" Company of the First Battalion of the IRA's Belfast Brigade.
He is the only republican to have been executed in the North since the 1920s. Five other men, including the veteran republican Mr Joe Cahill, were convicted of Const Murphy's murder.
A major campaign - supported by Pope Pius XII, the US administration and the then Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera - secured a reprieve for the five men but not for Williams. He sang republican songs to prison officers on the night before his execution.
The next morning, hundreds of Catholics knelt in prayer outside the jail while groups of loyalist women gathered and sang Dolly's Brae and The Sash. It was a day of mourning in many nationalist areas. About 1,000 dockers in Belfast stopped work. Shops closed and black flags were erected.
The Irish News reported that Williams walked "steadily to the scaffold" and kissed a crucifix before dropping to his death. After the hanging, Williams's body was placed in a makeshift coffin which was carried by four prison officers and lowered into an unmarked grave near the jail's hospital. "T.W." was later scratched on the wall.
Williams's body was exhumed from Crumlin Road last Saturday. A spokesman for the prison service confirmed that the remains had been passed on to the state pathologist for further examination and identification.
The exhumation of Williams's remains was welcomed by Mr Liam Shannon, of the National Graves Association, who said republicans wanted him buried in the republican plot in Milltown Cemetery.
He said the exhumation was "long overdue" and the Williams family would be delighted that he would be given "the Christian burial he deserves".
However, the decision was denounced by the DUP justice spokesman, Mr Ian Paisley jnr, who claimed it was "a pay-off" by the authorities for movement on the bodies of the "disappeared" who were abducted and secretly buried by the Provisional IRA in the 1970s and 1980s.