Ulster braces for Sands’s death

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 8

Ulster braces for Sands’s death

NZPA-Reuter Belfast The family of the jailed Irish guerrilla Bobby Sands, who is now on the fiftyeighth day of a hunger strike, has been told to stay near the telephone as his death could come at any time, Sands's supporters have said. A spokesman for the committee co-ordinating support for Sands, who was elected to the British Parliament two weeks ago. said that prison doctors had told his family that he almost died at the week-end. The doctors said Sands's mother and two sisters should stay close to the telephone as death was imminent.

So far all efforts to end the fast have failed. Sands is demanding special treatment for all Republican prisoners in the British-ruled province, but this has been refused by the British Government which regards convicted guerrillas as common criminals.

Sands's supporters later called for an emergency meeting with the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic (Mr Charles Haughey), who has in the past rejected such requests.

They said that he could force Britain to agree to Sands's demands by threatening to remove the British Ambassador in Dublin, withdraw troops from the Ulster border, and end Anglo-Irish talks.

An air of gloomy apprehension prevailed yesterday at a mass Republican rally in the predominantly Roman Catholic West Belfast in support of Sands and three fellow prisoners on a similar fast for up to 44 days.

Most of the 12,000 people at the rally clearly expected Sands to die and speakers called for unity and determination among Catholics should that happen. The Republican activist Bernadette Devlin McAlis-

key. who survived a recent assassination attempt, told the crowd that it Sands did die Republicans would unite "to drive you to the boats, mother England.” Sands began refusing food on March 1 and since then has only accepted salt and water as nourishment. The last Northern Irish hunger striker to die was Frank Stagg, whose death in 1976 occurred in a British jail after a 61-day fast. A Merseyside member of the British Parliament, Barry Porter, yesterday escaped serious injury after receiving a letter bomb through the post. Mr Porter, who is 41, Conservative member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port, told the police that he suspected the incendiary device was sent by supporters of Bobby Sands. Mr Porter did not open the letter-bomb after his wife became suspicious because of the way it was addressed.