‘John didn’t kill himself’

October 13, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

Margaret and Lorna Brady, flanked by two Real IRA guards, at the wake for John Brady, who died last Saturday in police custody

www.tribune.ie

Republican prisoner John Brady had a row with his brother-in-law while on weekend parole. He ended up hanging from his laces in a PSNI cell. His family don’t believe it was suicide.

Suzanne Breen reports

‘My son didn’t kill himself. He wouldn’t have given the police that pleasure, he wouldn’t have let them beat him,” says Margaret Brady. “And he loved me far too much to end his own life. He knew that would have destroyed me.”

We’re in the living room of a terraced house in Strabane. Upstairs, Margaret’s son John lies in a coffin. He’s wearing a football shirt – his beloved Liverpool. But the emblems of his other passion are all around. A Tricolour drapes the body. His black gloves and beret sit on top.

John Brady was found hanging by his laces in Derry’s Strand Road police station last weekend. He was 40 years old. He’d spent almost half his life in jail. The early years were for republican offences, including the murder of a policeman. The last five years were effectively internment, his family say. Brady had been convicted of nothing.

A small group of supporters had fought a long campaign, with no mainstream political support, to have him freed. Finally, they succeeded. Brady was to be released permanently next month. He had started weekend parole.

Then on Friday 2 October, he was arrested. He was questioned about assaulting and threatening to kill his brother-in-law earlier that day, which he denied. Police held him overnight and were about to charge him. So could John Brady not face another long stretch in prison or did something more sinister happen last Saturday in Strand Road barracks?

At the wake, nobody believes Brady killed himself. “Suicide would have been alien to him,” says close friend Paddy Brown.

The house is overflowing with mourners. Not just Northerners: republicans from Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Limerick, and Monaghan are there. Around 100 people queue outside on a bitterly cold night to enter the wake house. Women serve them sandwiches and tea. Read full article…