Richard McIlkenny, one of six men wrongly imprisoned for 16 years in Britain for IRA bombings, has died in a Dublin hospital.
Mr McIlkenny, 73, died at the James Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin, with his family at his bedside, according to a spokesperson from the Health Service Executive.
He had been battling cancer for some time.
Mr McIlkenny was one of six men who came to be known as the Birmingham Six - Mr Richard McIlkenny, Mr Hugh Callaghan, Mr Paddy Hill, Mr Gerard Hunter, Mr William Power and Mr John Walker - who were wrongfully convicted of the bombings in 1975 and released 16 years later when their convictions were overturned.
Originally from Belfast, Mr McIlkenny joined the Irish Army in 1952, serving four years before emigrating to England.
He was a factory worker in towns in the North of England and was living in Birmingham when he was detained along with friends by Special Branch detectives on November 21, 1974 after two pubs in the city were bombed.
He was interrogated and beaten by British police for three days until he signed a false confession admitting to bombing the pubs in which 21 people died and 162 were injured.
On November 24, 1974, Mr McIlkenny appeared in court along with Patrick Hill, Gerry Hunter, Hugh Callaghan, Billy Power and Johnny Walker, and was remanded into custody.
Whilst in prison, all six men were beaten, and in August 1975 the Birmingham Six were sentenced to life in prison on the basis of their false confessions.
They were denied leave to appeal and forced to wait until 1987, when, in the light of new evidence, their case was referred to the Court of Appeal before being rejected.
Mass public protests in Ireland and in England kept their case alive until August 1990, when forensic investigations showed their confessions had been tampered with.
In March 1991, the Appeal Court quashed their convictions, bringing to an end one of Britain's most infamous miscarriages of justice.
The six men were freed amid emotional scenes.
At an impromptu press conference was held on the road outside the Old Bailey where the six men expressed their anger and frustration at their years of imprisonment for crimes they did not commit.
Richard McIlkenny was first to speak. "It's good to see you all," he said. "We've waited a long time for this - 16 years because of hypocrisy and brutality. But every dog has its day and we're going to have ours."
Paddy Hill then addressed the gathered supporters.
"For sixteen and a half years we've been used as political scapegoats for the people in there. The police told us from the start we did not do it. They told us they didn't care who had done it."
"They told us we were selected and they were going to frame us for it and just to keep the people in there happy,' he said, pointing to the Old Bailey, adding 'I don't think them people in there have got the intelligence or the honesty to spell the word justice, never mind dispense it. They're rotten."
The IRA is widely believed to have been behind the bombings that devastated The Tavern and the Mulberry Bush pubs on the night of November 21st, 1974, which led to widespread reprisal attacks on the large Irish community in the Midlands city.