Real IRA activist was convicted in 1998 of possessing massive explosives and was found murdered in July this year
A Real IRA activist who tried to bomb the Grand National in 1998 has been buried in his native County Kildare.
Armed Irish police officers prevented dissident republicans from firing over the coffin of Larry "Bomber" Keane. Keane was kicked to death near his home in Athy on 18 July. His death is understood not to have been linked to paramilitaries.
Dissident republicans wearing berets flanked the coffin, which was draped in an Irish tricolour, while members of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement – the political wing of the Real IRA — marched behind it.
Gardaí investigating Keane's murder arrested a 47-year-old man in the Athy area last Thursday. He was later released without charge. The Garda Síochána are continuing to appeal for information about the assault that led to Keane's death.
Senior Gardaí vowed not to allow a repeat of the scenes at the funeral of murder Real IRA leader Alan Ryan last September when shots were fired over his coffin and the terror group put on a full paramilitary funeral.
In December 1998 Keane, a father of six children, pleaded guilty to having 444kg (980lb) of an improvised explosive mixture, a timer power unit, an electrical detonator, two improvised booster tubes and an improvised detonating cord with intent to endanger life at Dún Laoghaire port eight months earlier. The bomb was almost twice the size of the device that devastated Omagh in the same year causing the deaths of 29 men, women and children.
The intercepted bomb in April 1998 had been destined for the Grand National at Aintree that year. It was one of several bombs the Real IRA built in the first half of 1998 which were designed to destabilise the political process in Northern Ireland and prevent a settlement between unionism and nationalism in the province. On two fronts the Real IRA failed, firstly because of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and then the Omagh atrocity which resulted in the terror group calling a ceasefire.