Guildford Four: A Long Wait For Justice
Updated: 4:30pm UK, Saturday 21 June 2014
Gerry Conlon and the other members of Guildford Four were convicted at the height of Northern Ireland's Troubles, after the IRA carried out a bombing campaign targeting pubs in the mainland UK.
But the deadly attacks in Guildford, Woolwich and Birmingham in 1974 became better known for the huge miscarriages of justices that followed, with the police under huge pressure to catch those responsible.
The plight of the Guildford Four was also highlighted by the 1993 film In The Name Of The Father, in which Conlon and his father Giuseppe were played by Daniel Day-Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite respectively.
Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson were jailed in 1975 for the attack on the Horse and Groom pub in Guildford which killed four soldiers and a civilian and injured scores more.
Mr Hill and Mr Armstrong were also jailed for the Woolwich bombing in which two people died.
In a separate trial, The Birmingham Six - Paddy Joe Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker - were convicted of the Midlands bombings.
Later Giuseppe, and members of the Maguire family - who became known as the Maguire Seven - were arrested and jailed for possessing and supplying the IRA with explosives.
All those involved protested their innocence and after years of campaigning their convictions were overturned.
In October 1989 the Court of Appeal quashed the sentences of the Guildford Four after they had served 14 years behind bars, amid doubts about the police evidence against them.
An investigation into the case by Avon and Somerset Police found serious flaws in the way Surrey Police handled the case.
However, Giuseppe Conlon died in prison in 1980, still protesting his innocence, and never saw his son released.
His sentence was posthumously overturned by the Court of Appeal along with those of the Maguires in June 1991. The Birmingham Six had their convictions overturned on appeal in the same year.
In July 2000, Prime Minister Tony Blair became the first senior politician to apologise to the Guildford Four.
In a letter sent to Paul Hill's wife - one of the American Kennedy clan - he wrote: "There were miscarriages of justice in your husband's case, and the cases of those convicted with him. I am very sorry indeed that this should have happened."
In recent years Gerry Conlon took up the cause of a number of dissident republicans jailed in Northern Ireland including Marian Price.
She was found guilty of offences linked to paramilitaries, including providing a phone used by the Real IRA hit squad that murdered two British soldiers at the Massereene barracks in Co Antrim in 2009.
He insisted his approach was not politically-motivated but about the right of people to have a fair trial and the right for justice to be seen to be done in public.
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