Former Provisional IRA leader and Maze prison hunger striker Brendan Hughes has died.
Mr Hughes (59), nicknamed The Dark, was said never to have fully recovered from his 53-day hunger strike in the H-blocks in 1980 and he died on Saturday.
Mr Hughes had become estranged from Sinn Féin and criticised its direction after the IRA ceasefires in the 1990s and the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
He had joined the IRA in 1969 and rose to become a senior figure. Arrested and jailed in the 1970s, he escaped but was recaptured and sent back to the Maze. In 1977 he became officer commanding of the IRA in the H-blocks and joined the "dirty protest" over prison conditions.
He and others called off a hunger strike in late 1980, believing they had won concessions concerning the wearing of a prison uniform and other issues.
With special category status still unresolved the following March, Bobby Sands began his hunger strike to the death and he was followed to the grave by nine other republican prisoners.
In later years Mr Hughes disagreed publicly with Sinn Féin, believing that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had compromised political principle and community and class loyalty.
Despite this, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams marked Mr Hughes's death, saying he was still a respected figure in republican circles. "Brendan was a very good friend and comrade over many years of struggle," he said.
"Brendan will be missed, not least by his family, but also by the wider republican family . . . He was my friend."
In 1999 Mr Hughes said: "The political process has created a class of professional liars and unfortunately it contains many republicans." Stopping short of calling for a return to a campaign of violence he added: "The whole apparatus of the Stormont regime is still there, it is still controlled by the British, it is still unjust, it is still cruel."