Former senior Provisional IRA member Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane has died at the age of 74 following a short illness.
Mr McFarlane, who died on Friday, was IRA commander in the Maze prison during the 1981 hunger strikes.
He had been imprisoned at the Maze for his part in the 1975 IRA bombing of a bar on the Shankill Road in which five people were killed.
He was among 38 IRA inmates who fled the Maze in Co Antrim in September 1983. They used smuggled guns and knives to overpower prison staff before hijacking a food lorry and driving to the main gate.
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Mr McFarlane was later arrested in Amsterdam in 1986, extradited to Northern Ireland and released on parole from the Maze in 1997.
Mr McFarlane was cleared in Dublin’s Special Criminal Court in 2008 of false imprisonment and firearms possession in relation to the kidnapping of businessman Don Tidey in 1983.
Mr McFarlane had already undertaken a challenge to the case in the European Court of Human Rights when he was acquitted in June 2006.
The court ruled in favour of the former IRA commander and found the 10-and-a-half-year wait from his arrest in 1998 until he walked free was excessive. The European court ordered the State to pay Mr McFarlane €5,500 damages and €10,000 costs and expenses.
Mr McFarlane was accused of kidnapping Mr Tidey after going on the run following the Maze prison escape in 1983. He denied any involvement.
Mr Tidey was snatched outside his south Dublin home and held captive for more than three weeks in a wooded hideaway while ransom demands were issued.
A trainee garda, Gary Sheehan (23), from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, and Patrick Kelly (35), an Army private, were shot dead during Mr Tidey’s rescue in December near Ballinamore, Co Leitrim.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said she learned of Mr McFarlane’s death with great sadness.
“Bik was dedicated to the struggle for the freedom and unity of Ireland, and the equality of its people, she said.
“Bik was, and will always remain, a giant of Irish republicanism,” she said.
“His life was about activism, about the uplift of working people, about the nationhood of Ireland. His life was also about music. He had the mind of a revolutionary but the heart of a poet. Bik loved connecting with others through song and storytelling. He was a talented singer and songwriter. So many will remember him for his music.
“Today, we have lost a great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland.”
Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly, a fellow Maze escapee in 1983, described his “friend and comrade” Mr McFarlane as a “lifelong republican activist”.
“Bik was a republican activist all his life right to the end and gave all that he had to the struggle for a united Ireland,” he said.
Mr Kelly described Mr McFarlane as a “huge figure within republicanism”, particularly noting his role in the hunger strike in 1981, “when 10 of our comrades lost their lives in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh”.
“Bik was a talented singer, songwriter and musician, and previously sang at many events and occasions including at previous ard fheis.
“He will be sadly missed by the many, many people who knew, respected and loved him,” Mr Kelly said.
