Profile: Séanna Walsh: Séanna Walsh, who read out the IRA statement on DVD, was one of the longest-serving republican prisoners.
He was a friend and cell-mate of hunger striker Bobby Sands, a one-time OC of the IRA in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison, and a leader of the blanket protest.
He is married to Sinéad Moore, another republican prisoner, and they have two children.
The Walsh family once lived in the nearby Ravenhill area until they were intimidated and left for the republican Short Strand enclave.
Around this time, Mr Walsh's close friend Patrick McCrory was shot dead at his front door by loyalist gunmen thought to be linked to the UDA/Ulster Freedom Fighters.
His brother, Cornelius, was shot dead by the same loyalist group four years later.
But, by that time, Séanna Walsh was already a republican prisoner.
By 1998, when he was 42, he had spent 21 years in jail, serving three sentences for weapons and explosives offences. He was eventually freed under the terms of that year's Belfast Agreement.
Mr Walsh had a locally famous encounter with DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson at the West Belfast Festival last year.
In a public debate Mr Walsh told Mr Donaldson who was pressing for IRA decommissioning: "I was arrested in 1988 with hundreds of pounds of homemade explosives. I had in my possession a number of home-made mortar bombs and what I'm saying to you is - when you talk about the capacity, removing the IRA's capacity to make war, I can go out of here tonight with a couple of hundred pounds in my pocket. I can purchase the equipment to make mortar bombs; to make Baltic Exchange-type bombs; to make Canary Wharf-type bombs."
He asked the DUP man: "How are you going to remove that capacity, Jeffrey? Are you going to kill me? Because that's the only way you can do it.
"Unless you reach some sort of agreement with me and people like me. That is the only way that people like me can be defused."