Gerry McGeough is no stranger to prison, having been jailed in several countries for his republican activities.
He joined the IRA's East Tyrone brigade in 1975, aged 16. The next two decades of his life were spent mainly on the run or behind bars. In 1978, he was arrested in England, questioned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and excluded from Britain.
Ten years later, he was arrested crossing the Dutch-German border with weapons in a car. He was charged with attacks on the British army in the Rhine. He was held for four years – mostly in solitary confinement – in an underground German bunker.
He was never convicted of any offence in Germany but was then extradited to the US where he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for attempting to buy SAM missiles there 10 years earlier.
McGeough had overseen a huge IRA gun-smuggling operation. He had begun work in Florida, travelling with a young American woman whose driving license was used to buy dozens of sophisticated weapons from gun shops and arms' dealers.
The US deported McGeough to the Republic in 1996. He became a prominent Sinn Féin figure and was national director of the party's 'No To Nice' campaign.
He also graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a history degree and started a teaching career. In 2006, he launched an ultra-Catholic magazine, the Hibernian, dedicated to "faith, family and country".
He left Sinn Féin several years earlier but didn't become politically active until returning to live in the North with his Spanish wife Maria with whom he has four children.
He stood as an independent republican candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the 2007 Assembly elections. He is currently president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Tyrone.
