A suspected Provisional IRA member has been jailed by a German court for six-and-a-half years for attempted murder in a 1996 mortar attack on a military base.
Michael Dickson, who was born in Scotland but now has Irish citizenship, had refused to plead over the charges that, along with four others, he was involved in the 1996 mortar bomb attack on the Quebec Barracks in Osnabruck, Germany - the British army's largest base outside Britain. He is also accused of being a member of the IRA.
He had been stationed at the base for six years.
Prosecutors in their closing arguments said it was only coincidence nobody was hurt or killed in the attack. Only one of the three mortars that were fired exploded, narrowly missing a petrol store.
German police said Dickson, a former army lorry driver who speaks fluent German, provided intelligence and assistance to the bombers. He was arrested in Prague last December and extradited in April to Germany.
During his four month stay in Prague's Pankrac prison, Dickson went on a two-day hunger strike.
The PSNI have said Dickson is also a suspect in the 1996 bombing of the army's Ulster headquarters, Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, Co Down, and in the 1999 shooting of a former IRA member, Mr Martin McGartland. Mr McGartland, who survived the attack, was a police informer.