Francis Hughes

Francis Hughes was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army from Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. Hughes was the most wanted man in Northern Ireland until his arrest following a shootout with the Special Air Service in which an SAS soldier was killed. At his trial he was sentenced to a total of 83 years imprisonment he died during the 1981 Irish hunger strike in HM Prison Maze.

Hughes was born in Bellaghy, County Londonderry onFebruary 1956 into a republican family, the youngest of four brothers in a family of ten siblings. Hughes father Joseph had been a member of the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s and one of his uncles had smuggled arms for the republican movement. This resulted in the Hughes family being targeted when internment was introduced in 1971, and Francis Hughes brother Oliver was interned for eight months without trial in Operation Demetrius. Hughes left school agedand started work as an apprentice painter and decorator.

Source: Wikipedia