{"id":382681,"date":"2026-03-13T06:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T06:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/382681\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T06:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T06:32:12","slug":"son-of-slain-prison-officer-claims-in-court-sinn-feins-pat-doherty-sanctioned-1983-shooting-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/382681\/","title":{"rendered":"Son of slain prison officer claims in court Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Pat Doherty sanctioned 1983 shooting \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> deputy president and MP Pat Doherty<\/a> sanctioned the 1983 killing of prison officer Brian Stack in Dublin<\/a>, the dead man\u2019s son Austin alleged in the high court in London<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The allegation was made during a civil suit taken against former Sinn F\u00e9in leader, Gerry Adams<\/a> for \u00a31 in damages by three victims of IRA<\/a> bombings in England, who argue that he was \u201cdirectly responsible\u201d for three IRA bombings between 1973 and 1996.<\/p>\n

Brian Stack was the chief prison officer at Portlaoise Prison and died in September 1984 \u2013 18 months after he was shot in the head by members of the Provisional IRA outside a boxing competition in Dublin.<\/p>\n

\u201cPat Doherty sanctioned the murder of my father,\u201d Austin Stack told Justice Jonathan Swift.<\/p>\n

He said he believed that Doherty, an MP for West Tyrone for almost two decades, had then been quartermaster general of the IRA.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Austin Stack accused Adams of repeatedly telling lies about a meeting they had in 2013 where Stack sought the then Sinn F\u00e9in leader\u2019s help to find out more about his father\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n

Adams had given false information about the encounter, he claimed, telling An Garda Sioch\u00e1na that Stack had given four names of people involved in his father\u2019s killing when Stack said he had done no such thing.<\/p>\n

Stack said he had been given information about the killing from two respected journalists with long-standing knowledge of the IRA: former Garda chief supt Peter Maguire and IRA informer Sean O\u2019Callaghan.<\/p>\n

Adams, he said, later ordered his close colleague Martin \u201cDuckster\u201d Lynch to investigate his father\u2019s killing, he said, which is only something one would do if one were part of the supervisory arm of an organisation.<\/p>\n

Later, Lynch told him the matter had been investigated and found that the killing had not been sanctioned and the person responsible had \u201cbeen disciplined\u201d.<\/p>\n

Adams was a senior figure in the IRA, Stack argued, had \u201can intimate knowledge\u201d of its workings and \u201cwas able to speak with one voice on behalf of the IRA and its former volunteers\u201d when he apologised in the D\u00e1il for Det Gda Jerry McCabe\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Sinn F\u00e9in deputy president and MP Pat Doherty sanctioned the 1983 killing of prison officer Brian Stack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,18,13,14,9618,6,19,17,6439,11,12,130,15,16,5,175567,14234,47,7,8],"class_list":["post-382681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-gerry-adams","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-republican-army","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-london","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-pat-doherty","tag-portlaoise","tag-sinn-fein","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116220470466959916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}