A suspected IRA member has been charged with five counts of attempted murder in connection with a 1989 bomb attack on a British military base in Germany.
The federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe stated yesterday that Leonard Joseph Hardy (45), from Antrim, will also face charges of deliberately causing an explosion. Mr Hardy, who has British and Irish citizenship, was arrested in Spain last August and turned himself over to German authorities in January before being released on €20,000 bail.
Germany's chief federal prosecutor accuses him of being a member of an IRA active service unit that carried out the attack on army base accommodation in Osnabrück on June 19th, 1989.
The perpetrators mounted five explosive devices containing a total of 120kg of Semtex on the three exterior walls of block 12 of the "Quebec Barracks" with the intent of killing the soldiers sleeping inside. After setting the detonator they were disturbed by a base employee.
One member of the unit fired a warning shot from an automatic pistol and the employee was subsequently knocked unconscious during a struggle.
Hearing the struggle and warning shot, the five sleeping soldiers inside woke up and left the room. Minutes later, one of the devices detonated and a considerable section of the building was damaged and partially destroyed.
In June 1995, Donna Maguire, Donncha and Pauline O'Kane and Patrick Murray were sentenced to an average of nine years' imprisonment for attempted murder and attempting to cause an explosion. They were released after the verdict, having already served two-thirds of their sentence in custody.
A total of 28 IRA attacks on British army bases in Germany from 1973 to 1996 killed six and injured 50.