1. Robert Storey was a Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
21 Facts About Bobby Storey
1. 2.
Bobby Storey played a key role in the Maze Prison escape, the biggest prison break in British penal history.
3.
The family had to move when Bobby Storey was very young due to Ulster loyalist attacks on the district, moving to Manor Street, an interface area in North Belfast.
4.
Bobby Storey had two brothers, Seamus and Brian, and a sister Geraldine.
5.
Seamus and Bobby Storey senior had been arrested after a raid on their home which uncovered a rifle and a pistol.
6.
On his mother Peggy's side of the family there was a history of republicanism, but Bobby Storey said "the dominant influences on" him "were the events that were happening around" him.
7.
Bobby Storey left school when he was fifteen and went to work with his father selling fruit.
8.
Bobby Storey had been arrested 20 times previous to this but was too young for internment.
9.
Bobby Storey was arrested on suspicion of a bombing at the Skyways Hotel in January 1976 and a kidnapping and murder in the Andersonstown district of Belfast in March 1976, but was acquitted by the judge at his trial.
10.
Bobby Storey was arrested leaving the courthouse and charged with a shooting-related incident.
11.
Bobby Storey was released after the case could not be proved, only to be charged with shooting two soldiers in Turf Lodge.
12.
In 1978 Bobby Storey was charged in relation to the wounding of a soldier in Lenadoon, but was acquitted at trial due to errors in police procedure.
13.
On 14 December 1979, Bobby Storey was later arrested in Holland Park, London, with three other IRA volunteers including Gerard Tuite, and charged with conspiring to hijack a helicopter to help Brian Keenan escape from Brixton Prison.
14.
Tuite escaped from the same prison prior to the trial, and the other two IRA volunteers were convicted, but Bobby Storey was acquitted at the Old Bailey in April 1981.
15.
Bobby Storey was one of the leaders of the Maze Prison escape in 1983, when 38 republican prisoners broke out of the H-Blocks, the largest prison escape in British penal history and the largest peacetime prison escape in Europe.
16.
Bobby Storey was recaptured within an hour, and sentenced to an additional seven years imprisonment.
17.
In October 2002, during Stormontgate, a bag belonging to Bobby Storey containing secret documents was seized from the home of double agent Denis Donaldson during his arrest.
18.
On 11 January 2005 Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for South Antrim, David Burnside, told the British House of Commons under parliamentary privilege that Bobby Storey was head of intelligence for the IRA.
19.
On 9 September 2015, Bobby Storey was arrested and held for two days in connection with the killing of former IRA volunteer Kevin McGuigan the previous month.
20.
Bobby Storey was released without any charges, and his solicitor John Finucane stated Storey would be suing for unlawful arrest.
21.
Bobby Storey died in Newcastle upon Tyne, England on 21 June 2020 following an unsuccessful lung transplant surgery.