German prosecutors charge suspected IRA member

German prosecutors filed attempted murder charges today against a suspected IRA man accused of taking part in a 1996 mortar attack on a British military base.

Michael Dickson, a 38-year-old from Greenock, Strathclyde, was arrested in Prague in December and extradited to Germany in April.

He faces attempted murder charges in an unspecified number of cases as well as setting off an explosion, German federal prosecutors said.

Dickson is suspected of being a member of a five-man IRA “active service unit” that shelled a British army base in Osnabrueck, north-west Germany, on June 28, 1996.

The IRA claimed responsibility for firing three home-made mortars onto the Quebec Barracks, causing material damage but no injuries among the 150 people who were at the facility.

Dickson, a former British soldier, had once served in an engineering unit at the base.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland have said Dickson is also a suspect in the 1996 bombing of the British army’s Northern Ireland headquarters, and in the 1999 shooting of a former IRA member, Martin McGartland.

McGartland, who survived the attack, was a former police spy within the IRA.

No date was set for the trial.