Former Old Bailey bomber Marian Price was last night being questioned by detectives in Antrim about dissident republican activity.
Price (57) was arrested at her west Belfast home shortly after 7am yesterday. Police carried out a nine-hour raid on the house.
They took away a lap-top, computer hard drives, old phones, photographs, and copies of republican magazines 'The Sovereign Nation' and 'Beir Bua'.
Price is the secretary of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement which security sources say is the Real IRA's political wing, a claim the group denies.
Last month, a masked Real IRA spokesman in combat gear read out a statement at the Sovereignty Movement commemoration on Easter Monday in Derry. Photographs in the media showed Price holding the statement. Several hundred people attended the event.
It is understood detectives are questioning her about the commemoration. Price was one of the Provisional IRA's most high-profile female members. With her sister Dolours and Gerry Kelly, now a Sinn Féin MLA, she was part of the unit which bombed London in 1973.
They left car bombs at the Old Bailey and Whitehall, which exploded. Other devices at the British Forces Broadcasting Office and New Scotland Yard failed to go off.
Two hundred people received minor injuries in the bombs and one man died of a heart attack. Price later embarked on a 200-day hunger strike in Brixton prison during which she was force fed 400 times in six months.
She expressed serious concerns about Sinn Féin's political direction in 1994. Five years later, Price joined the Sovereignty Movement.
She said her "military days" were long over but she wouldn't "condemn others for doing what I did myself". She is often seen at protests for republican prisoners.
Gary Donnelly of the Sovereignty Movement condemned Price's arrest. "It is part of the ongoing campaign of harassment against republicans which has intensified recently and is yet another example of political policing," he said.
