Leading Belfast republican and travel journalist Gerry O’Hare has died at the age of 79.
Mr O'Hare died in Belfast this afternoon after having suffered from ill health for some time.
O’Hare was an IRA member, a former editor of the weekly republican paper An Phoblacht and was one of the country’s best-known travel writers.
He joined the Provisional IRA when the northern troubles broke out in 1969 and became a high ranking member. He fled across the border in the early 1970’s and was imprisoned for IRA membership.
O’Hare was one of the IRA prisoners who helped restrain prison officers in the exercise yard of Mountjoy prison when a hijacked helicopter landed there in October, 1973. Three leading Provisional IRA men - Seamus Twomey, Kevin Mallon and JB O’Hagan - escaped in the helicopter.
An Phoblacht
O’Hare along with other IRA inmates were transferred to Portlaoise Prison and on his release he became editor of An Phoblacht, the southern Provisional movement newspaper, from 1975 until 1977.
He was a close friend of former IRA Chief of Staff Daithi O’Conaill and maintained his links with the republican movement up until his death.
He started working for the Irish Press Group in the late 1970’s and went on to work on the newsdesk before becoming the Irish Press travel editor. Unusually for a travel writer, he was forced to avoid any flights which might land at British airports because he was still the subject of outstanding warrants in Northern Ireland.
O’Hare founded the magazine Travel Extra when the Irish Press Group closed in 1995. He was well known and liked in the travel industry and often regaled industry professionals with stories of his time as a Provo activist.
His first wife Rita O’Hare is the Sinn Fein representative in Washington DC. He married journalist and author Anne Cadwallader, who survives him, in the 1980s.
