Shane Paul O'Doherty

Shane Paul O'Doherty grew up as a young teenager in Derry, Northern Ireland, during the Civil Rights protests by Catholics there which were violently repressed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and later by the British Army, culminating in the infamous Bloody Sunday murders by British Army paratroopers when 13 Civil Rights marchers were shot and killed. O'Doherty joined the Irish Republican Army when he was fifteen years old and later rose to become one of its chief explosive experts and a prolific bomber. After 5 years of IRA activities, he was arrested during a ceasefire and later sentenced to life imprisonment (x30) with a concurrent 20 year sentence for high profile London bombings and letter bombings. He had refused to recognise the Old Bailey court which tried and sentenced him. He spent the first 15 months of his imprisonment naked in solitary confinement in Wormwood Scrubs prison in London protesting for political status and a transfer back to Northern Ireland. During his first few years in prison, he regularly argued with prison chaplains and turned from the bomb to the pen and became a prolific letter writer to member of parliament and something of a jail lawyer for other prisoners. His studies of penology and prisoners' rights caused him to study human rights and just war theory. While maintaining years of prison protests, he nevertheless published a letter back in Ireland recommending the IRA to give up armed struggle and to enter democratic politics which, he argued, had never been tried or seen to fail. O'Doherty became very attached to his Catholicism and was befriended by Cardinal Basil Hume in London and by Cardinal Tomas O'Fiaich in Ireland, but most particularly by his bishop in Derry, Edward Daly, who was the famous priest in Bloody Sunday newsreels waving the white handkerchief while shot and dying civil rights' marchers were carried forward through rifle-wielding paratroopers' lines. O'Doherty was released from prison after 14 years and became one of the first ex-IRA voices for peace. His memoir, "The Volunteer - A Former IRA Man's True Story" (HarperCollins, 1993)became an instant bestseller in Ireland, and the film rights to his story were initially taken up by Janet Tobias, then Dianne Sawyer's producer at ABC. O'Doherty's book was later published in Spanish (LibrosLibres, 2008)and he gave talks in Spain about ETA violence. His book was later published in America by www.SBPRA.com and later again in Germany by www.eire-verlag.de

O'Doherty regularly gives lively talks to hundreds of students of college age in Spain and elsewhere mosty under the auspices of www.loquedeverdadimporta.org