Gerard 'Hucker' Moyna: Continuity IRA bomber who lost fingers in botched Belfast city centre bombing dies

Gerard 'Gerry' Moyna, nicknamed Hucker, was also reportedly the man who fatally shot the sadistic loyalist Lenny Murphy – leader of the Shankill Butchers – in 1982.

The Sunday World said it had been in negotiations with Moyna about publishing details of his life as a paramilitary at the time of his death in west Belfast on Saturday.

Moyna was a member of the Provisional IRA, but at the time of his botched Belfast attack (which happened one month before the PIRA renewed its ceasefire) he was close to senior members of the Continuity IRA, who aided him in fleeing Northern Ireland afterwards.

The Irish News reports he had also been linked to the IPLO, a splinter group of the INLA, earlier in the 1990s.

On May 10, 1997, a bomb which Moyna was carrying partially exploded in transit on College Avenue (a street on the west side of the city centre which runs roughly between the Lower Falls and Great Victoria Street).

Police arriving at the scene found blood, scorch marks, and bomb components inside the car; it appeared the detonators had gone off, but the main Semtex charge had not.

He was given a seven-year jail sentence by Dublin's specialist anti-terror court in 1999.

He had priors, including a conviction for gun possession in Belfast in 1985.

An account of the 1997 explosion is contained in the book The Accidental Spy by journalist Sean O'Driscoll (a book about the infiltration of dissident republicans by an unlikely mole: American trucker David Rupert).

Mr O’Driscoll’s work had proved invaluable just a week ago when researching the death of Marxixt republican diehard Rose Dugdale:

• Rose Dugdale dead: Super-rich English philosophy scholar turned-IRA bomber and art thief dies

Mr O'Driscoll wrote that the explosion happened inside a taxi in which Moyna was travelling.

He had told the driver to take them to Royal Avenue – the main shopping street in the city centre – when the detonators prematurely went off.

Moyna limped three streets away, trailing blood, then a car picked him up and spirited him to west Belfast, then to Donegal, where he was collected by CIRA paramilitary Joe O'Neill.

O'Neill took him to a village doctor in the middle of the night, presenting the doctor with the injured man and his three severed fingers.

From there he was referred to Sligo hospital where surgeons could not reattach the fingers.

Suspicious of his injuries, they called the police.

Moyna and his CIRA accomplices concocted a story that his injuries were from fireworks, but police later matched detonator fragments from his hands to the device in the car.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, it appears he was bailed before eventually pleading guilty.

The book recounts that he spent his time drinking in Bundoran, Co Donegal, attempting to spend a compensation payment he had recently received for a car accident before his inevitable jail sentence.

He reportedly died at home at the weekend at the age of 67.

Former IRA member Tim Brannigan wrote on Twitter to his 14,500 followers: “A formidable republican and former IRA volunteer, Hucker Moyna, died this weekend... Rest easy, Hucker.”

Meanwhile the Twitter account JM (@redoctoberirp, affiliated to the INLA-linked IRSP) wrote to its 2,300 followers: “West Belfast lost another legend in Hucker Moyna... We will never produce a generation like that again. Sad to see them all go one by one. Heroes every last one of them.”