An Irishwoman at the centre of a major controversy involving the French gendarmerie 20 years ago has died in a drowning accident in County Donegal.
Ms Mary Reid (49), was one of three people caught up in the "Irish of Vincennes" case in August 1982. She was arrested at an apartment in Vincennes with Mr Stephen King and Mr Michael Plunkett on terrorism charges.
All three had links with the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and it was alleged that they were part of an Irish-Palestinian terrorist cell. The arrests were heralded in France as one of the first successes of the newly-formed elite anti-terrorist unit.
However, it later emerged that the gendarmerie had planted the guns and explosives in the apartment. All three Irish citizens were cleared of the charges on October 5th, 1983, after spending nine months in prison.
Since then, the case has reappeared in the French courts several times. In 1992, Ms Reid was involved in taking a case against Capt Paul Barril, the officer who staged the apartment raid. After years of legal wrangling, the case was dropped last year on minor technicalities. That decision was appealed to the French supreme court and a decision has not yet been made.
Capt Barril sued Le Monde for libel over the case. In November 1995, he lost his case and the supreme court ruled that Le Monde was correct to report that the "operation was from beginning to end a frame-up, carried out by Capt Barril".
In 1991, Ms Reid told a French court that the affair had "destroyed her life". Her nine-year-old son Cathal was with her in France and was placed in a French foster home and then with friends before being cared for by his grandmother.
Ms Reid was editor of the Starry Plough, the IRSP's newspaper, for several years.
She returned to Ireland in 1987 and became involved in community work.
For the past two years, she had been teaching English to GCSE students, through the Community Resource Centre in Rosemount, Derry.
Ms Reid was found drowned last week on a beach at Inishowen, Donegal.
According to The Irish Echo, her partner, Mr Terry Robson, had reported her missing after she had not returned from a walk with her dog.
It was thought she might have tried to rescue the dog after it got into difficulties.
Yesterday her solicitor, Mr Antoine Comte, said she had fought for 20 years to see justice done and it was a "great pity" that she did not live to achieve it.
"It has been truly accepted that the whole case was a frame-up but not one person has been sentenced for that frame-up," Mr Comte said. He did not know when the French court would be issuing its decision but said these cases took "a long time".
Mr Stephen King, who still lives in France, said he had not seen Ms Reid or Mr Plunkett for about 18 months. He said it was sad that she had died before the case had concluded.
Their case was a "very big scandal" at the time, he said and sometimes it seemed as if it would never go away.
