Solicitor and author to be questioned over 1974 Birmingham bombings that killed 21

West Midlands police are seeking to question ex-IRA man, Kieran Conway, the author of a recently-published memoir, Southside Provisional, From Freedom Fighter to the Four Courts, about his knowledge of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974. The Birmingham Mail reported that the chief constable, Chris Sims, has said that while they do wish to put questions to Mr Conway, he is not a UK resident, and that accordingly there is a "complex process" to be gone through before an interview can take place.

West Midlands police previously wrote to Mr Conway asking for his assistance in their investigation into one of the worst IRA atrocities of the Troubles – 21 people were killed and more than 200 injured. Mr Conway, who wrote in his book that he was “appalled and personally ashamed of the bombings which went against everything we claimed to stand for”, stated that he accompanied the then chairman of the IRA Army Council, Daithi O’Connell, and another leadership figure to a house where the then O/C of the IRA’s England unit and his adjutant were debriefed. Mr Conway said that he played no part in the debrief, but O’Connell, who is now dead, told him “the indications were that the casualties were the result of yet another failure in the warning system, a succession of phone boxes from which the warning might have been relayed having proved to be inoperable”. It is understood that Mr Conway has replied to the West Midlands police, saying he had nothing to add to what he had written in his book.

The West Midlands police may now seek to exercise their rights under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, which allow the UK authorities to transmit a government to government request that a supplied list of questions be put to Mr Conway, who would be under caution but would not be compelled to answer them. This questioning could take place either in a Garda station or before the District Court.

Mr Conway, who was the IRA’s director of intelligence at the time of the Birmingham bombings, is now a solicitor in Dublin specialising in criminal law.

Last December, Northern solicitor John McBurney, who represented the family of the murdered RUC chief superintendent Harry Breen at the Smithwick tribunal in Dublin , called on the Government to open a formal investigation into Mr Conway’s allegations in his book that rogue gardaí and other State employees colluded with the IRA throughout the Troubles, even helping to prevent the entire army council from being arrested.