Veteran Republican Joe Cahill dies in Belfast
24/07/2004 - 08:34:32Veteran Republican Joe Cahill has died in Belfast.
Labelled the father figure of the modern Republican movement, Cahill had been jailed on a number of occasions and was sentenced to death in the 1940s for the murder of a policeman.
He later had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, however, after the intervention of the then Pope.
The 84 year-old was an honorary life vice-president of Sinn Féin.
He died in Belfast where he had been a leading figure in the IRA for many decades, named by the army in the early 1970s as the IRA's chief of staff.
He was released from jail in the early 1950s after serving only part of his life sentence, but was put back behind bars in 1973 for gun-running.
