James Kelly: Capt James Kelly, who has died aged 73, was an Irish version of France's Capt Dreyfus in his lengthy campaign to clear his name following the charges that he conspired to import arms illegally for use in Northern Ireland in 1970.
While Capt Dreyfus had to serve some time in Devil's Island before being reinstated in the French army, Capt Kelly spent only 24 hours in detention following his arrest but the rest of his life- 33 years - seeking justice.
He was, of course, found not guilty of the charges along with his co-defendants, Charles Haughey, John Kelly and Albert Luykx. Similar charges against Neil Blaney were dismissed in a lower court. But Capt Kelly believed that he had been betrayed by his political masters, especially the Minister for Defence, Jim Gibbons, who, he insisted, was informed of his secret mission to Germany to buy arms and equipment worth £30,000.
The arms were for Northern Catholic defence committees in the event of future pogroms and he was able to cite a February 1970 Government directive to the Army Chief-of-Staff to support this claim.
Capt Kelly planned to store the arms in a monastery near the Border until they were needed but the Provisional IRA, which hoped to take possession of them once they arrived in Dublin, may have had other ideas. This aspect of the affair is still unclear.
Capt Kelly had kept his immediate superior, Col Michael Hefferon, Director of Army Intelligence, fully briefed on his activities. He, in turn, had been briefing Mr Gibbons. When State papers for 1970 were released in January 2001, Capt Kelly discovered a document which satisfied him that he had been the victim of a conspiracy.
He discovered that the document setting out the original statement of Col Hefferon to the police investigating the aborted arms import had been altered in the Book of Evidence to exclude references to Mr Gibbons being kept informed of the operation.
When the revelation was aired on RTÉ's Prime Time, Capt Kelly must have believed that at last his name would be fully cleared. But after a lengthy inquiry by the then Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, and the Attorney General, Michael McDowell, the cautious conclusion was that "the claims of conspiracy to suppress vital evidence are unlikely to be true but cannot be ruled out entirely."
Capt Kelly had to die before the State would give him the acknowledgement that he had always acted honourably. In the course of his statement this week, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said that at all times "Capt Kelly acted on what he believed were the proper orders of his superiors. For my part, I have never found any reason to doubt his integrity."
James Kelly was born in Bailieboro, Co Cavan, on October 16th, 1929. He was the eldest of 10 children. His father had been a farmer, mill owner and publican and had been one of the first Sinn Féin councillors elected in East Cavan.
He was educated at the Bailieboro national school and later St Patrick's College, Cavan, and Presentation College, Bray. He joined the Army as a private in 1949 but then transferred to the Cadet College and was commissioned as second lieutenant in 1951. He served in the Fifth Infantry Battalion and was later promoted and transferred to Kells to supervise FCA training. In 1956 he married Sheila Kane, who also came from Co Cavan and was working in the Civil Service. They had six children.
In 1960, he was promoted to captain and appointed to serve in Army Intelligence. He spent three years in the Middle East during the 1960s as a military observer for the United Nations based mainly in Damascus.
When Derry's Bogside erupted in August 1969, Capt Kelly was on holidays in Belfast where his brother Martin was a priest. He was ordered by Col Hefferon to keep a close eye on developments in republican circles. He thus found himself caught up in the struggle inside the IRA which was to result within months in the split leading to the formation of the Provisional IRA and its political organisation.
But in the early stages, Capt Kelly was dealing mainly with the defence committees set up to protect Catholic areas and which were sending emissaries to Dublin appealing for arms. He helped to set up the meeting of Northern republicans in a Bailieboro hotel on October 4th-5th, which is regarded as the genesis of the later attempt to import arms. The meeting was paid with money supplied to Capt Kelly by Mr Haughey, who, along with Mr Blaney, was in charge of a Cabinet sub-committee charged with keeping contact with developments in Northern Ireland.
Reports by the Garda Special Branch of this meeting, attended, among others, by members of the IRA, were passed on to the Cabinet through the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, while Capt Kelly made his own report and recommendations to Col Hefferon. Police suspicion of what the Army captain and certain ministers were planning in conjunction with republicans, if not IRA activists, was to culminate in the calling off of the plan to import arms and then in the arrests and the trials.
After being found not guilty, Capt Kelly was called before the Public Accounts Committee, which was investigating what had happened to the £100,000 allocated for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland under Mr Haughey's sole discretion. A sizeable portion had gone to the purchase of the arms which never arrived and Capt Kelly was given a tough time by the committee members. Dr Garret FitzGerald, then a recently elected Fine Gael TD, was his chief tormentor and there were stormy exchanges.
Thirty years later Capt Kelly received €70,000 in settlement of a libel action from the publisher of a book on the Arms Trial by Justin O'Brien in respect of a claim misattributed to Dr FitzGerald, and for which the latter also received an apology, that the jury's verdict had been "perverse". Dr FitzGerald had been referring only to the verdict on Mr Haughey.
But life as a former Army officer with a modest pension was to be difficult for Capt Kelly, who had a large family to support. His account of events, Orders for the Captain, had to be published at his own expense. He found it hard to get a job because of all the publicity. He had brief stints as an auctioneer and a journalist but was eventually forced to sell his house in Dublin and move back to Bailieboro, where he bought his father's old pub. He also bought a weekly newspaper, the Cavan Leader, which was forced to close after a few years.
He had mixed fortunes as a politician during these times. He first joined Aontacht Éireann, the party founded by Kevin Boland, and did a speaking tour of Australia in 1975. He stood unsuccessfully as an Independent candidate in Cavan-Monaghan in the general election of 1977 and in 1979 almost got elected as an independent councillor.
In 1981 he joined Fianna Fáil, saying that "with Charlie Haughey coming into power, things were more or less back on track for the party". In 1985 he was elected to the Fianna Fáil National Executive and kept his place until 1989 when he resigned over the Government's policy on extradition. In the same year he published The Courage of the Brave, setting out his ideas on a Northern Ireland solution.
He had earlier published a novel about life in Cavan called The Marrow from the Bone. He also took up sculpting from bog oak and held several exhibitions.
He is survived by his wife Sheila; sons Peter and Justin; daughters Suzanne, Jacqueline, Sylvia Kelly-Richards and Sheila; brothers Vincent, Brendan, Father Oliver, Father Martin; sisters Bernadette, Eileen, Theresa, Pauline and Mary.