Irish soldier who joined IRA denies Prince Charles plot

A former Irish soldier, who “aided” the Provisional IRA while a member of the Defence Forces, and later joined the nationalist paramilitaries, has denied that when he and colleagues in an IRA active service unit were arrested in Belgium in 1990 they were preparing to assassinate Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Examiner, Kieran McCarthy, now a Cork county councillor, reveals that he faked a baptismal certificate to get into the Irish army, came to sympathise with, aid, and then join the IRA, and ended up in a Belgium jail.