IRA suspect on trial for attack on British base

A 45-year-old IRA suspect went on trial today on charges of attempted murder for a bungled 1989 attack on a British base in Germany.

Leonard Joseph Hardy, from Antrim, Northern Ireland, is also charged with deliberately causing an explosion. He is being tried by a state court in the central town of Celle.

Hardy was arrested last August in a hotel in the Spanish resort city of Torremolinos and extradited in January. He is accused of taking part in the attack on the British army’s Quebec barracks in Osnabruck in 1989.

Prosecutors say he was one of at least five IRA “Active Service Unit” members that planned to plant the bombs – made of a total of 265 pounds of military-grade plastic explosives – around the base.

The suspects were disturbed by a workman as they tried to lay the charges and only one bomb went off, causing damage, but no injuries, prosecutors said.

Four others involved in the attack were convicted in Germany in 1995 of attempted murder and sentenced to several years in prison.