SENT TO GAOL.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20296, 4 May 1934, Page 1

SENT TO GAOL.

I.R.A. Officer Sentenced by Tribunal. ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF ARMS. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received May 4, 12.50 p.m.) LONDON. May 3. A prominent Irish Republican, Thomas Barry, was summoned before the Military Tribunal on a charge of possessing a machine-gun and -554 rounds of revolver ammunition. He refused to recognise the Court’s jurisdiction on any charge whatever, especially in respect to the possession of the arms, which were the property of the Republican Army. Barry, who was director of operations in the I.R A. civil war, declared: “It is a damnable scandal that the Executive Council should place me on trial before the officers of an army which I once tried to wipe out at the executive’s instigation.” Barry was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, of which three months will be remitted if he enters into recognisances of £IOO to keep the peace for two years. BISHOP ATTACKS I.R.A. Membership a Grievous Sin. LONDON, May 2. The Right Rev Thomas O’Doherty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Galway, speaking in his diocese, declared that the Republican Army was creating gangsters similar to those of Chicago. The Saor Eire was applying Bolshevik methods to the salvation of Ireland. He warned his hearers that they were committing a grievous sin if they belonged to the Republican Army, which would proclaim a republic at the election if it wanted it. The mugger-mugger of secretly armed gunmen was iniquitous, because the arms were employed for intimidation, private vengeance and armed robbery. Was it patriotism, he asked, to kill poor women in the debris of their own house and injure little boys playing in the street.