Ex-British soldier jailed for attempted murder

A former British soldier who joined the IRA was jailed for six and a half years in Germany today for attempted murder at his old army base.

Michael Dickson, 39, took part in a 1996 mortar attack on the British base in Osnabrueck, north-west Germany.

A state court in Celle also found him guilty of setting off an explosion.

Presiding Judge Wolfgang Siolek said it was “pure chance” that nobody was hurt or killed in the attack, though he described Dickson’s role in the Provisional IRA as minor.

Dickson acknowledged during the trial that began last month that that he rented an apartment and vehicles for the attack.

“Though his involvement, the accused has made himself guilty of an undetermined number of counts of attempted murder,” the judge said.

Dickson was a member of a five strong IRA active service unit that shelled the army base Osnabrueck in June 1996.

The IRA claimed responsibility for firing three home-made mortar shells from an abandoned minivan on to the Quebec Barracks, causing material damage but no injuries among the 150 people who were at the facility.

Dickson, from Greenock, Scotland, had been in the British army for seven years until 1988 and once served in an engineering unit at the Osnabrueck base.

He was arrested in Prague last December and extradited in April to Germany.

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

McGartland, who survived the attack, who was a police informer.