IN the same week the Rossport Five were committed to Cloverhill Prison, American journalist Judith Miller also received the same tough love treatment for failing to cooperate with a US federal investigator.

IN THE foreword to Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (O’Brien Press, 25), Brendan Anderson explains that Cahill, a former chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, spoke to him “frankly about those things that he is free to speak about”.

The former chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, Sean MacStiofain, has died in hospital aged 73 after a long illness.