A man has been jailed for 25 years for his "crucial role" in planting the 1996 Docklands bomb which killed two people and injured more than 100 others.
The jury was discharged by the judge from giving verdicts on two murder charges against James Mc Ardle (29) because of a report which appeared in a British newspaper, the Sun, yesterday. It found him guilty on Thursday at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to cause explosions.
The jurors were sent home when they were still considering murder charges involving two newsagents who were killed by the lorry-bomb placed near their shop.
Mr John Bevan QC, prosecuting, described the newspaper re port as "disgraceful" and a "flagrant contempt" of a court order. Mr Justice John Kay told McArdle that he was only jailing on the conspiracy charge and on the basis that he did not intend to kill anyone or cause injury. The judge made it clear however that the "cowardly plan" had resulted in two deaths and many injuries, some of "such severity that the lives of the victims will be permanently marred".
The blast caused in excess of £150 million damage to Docklands and "engendered misery and terror" for many people. The judge added that the irony of Mc Ardle being sentenced yesterday was that the people of Northern Ireland were going to the polls. "That may bring a crumb of comfort to many people in Ulster but nothing can comfort the families of the two men who died and those whose lives were marred by this explosion."
He said the conspiracy ran from November 1995 to February 1996 at a time when the IRA had agreed to a ceasefire. "It may be that if the two men who died had known that the ceasefire was over they might have left their premi ses in a greater hurry," the judge continued.
He was satisfied that McArdle was a "trusted member" of the Provisional IRA. The fact that organisation may have forsaken violence was not a reason for mitigating his sentence. He noted also that McArdle had never "shown the slightest remorse for what he had done".
Yesterday's conviction at Woolwich Crown Court was McArdle's second trial. In the first, an Old Bailey jury was discharged on February 20th after six weeks. The huge lorry-bomb McArdle is said to have parked at South Quay close to Canary Wharf brought an end to the first IRA ceasefire. Mr Bevan said it was a "little short of a miracle" that more people were not killed or injured in the "atrocity" because inadequate and misleading warnings were given by the IRA.
McArdle (29), of Crossmaglen, south Armagh, denied two charges of murder and conspiracy to cause explosions between October 30th, 1995, and February 10th, 1996. He admitted driving the lorry but claimed he had been used by an IRA "godfather" he referred to only as the "boss". He refused to identify the man in court saying it would put his family at risk.
McArdle was alleged to have left a total of 14 finger-prints which linked him to the bombing. He drove the lorry from Northern Ireland down to River Road in Barking, east London and then onto Docklands.