In November 1983, Irish supermarket executive Don Tidey was abducted by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and held hostage for 22 days in a wood in County Leitrim with demands for a IR£5 million ransom. Tidy was freed on 16 December 1983, in a joint Garda Síochána and Irish Defense Forces rescue. Trainee Garda Gary Sheehan and Irish Army soldier Patrick Kelly were killed in the shootout, while all of Tidey's kidnappers escaped. Irish Republican activist Brendan McFarlane was charged in 1998 with Tidey's kidnapping, but the case collapsed due to evidence being ruled as inadmissible. The dramatic circumstances of Tidey's rescue, such as the violation of internal PIRA rules excluding military action in the Irish Republic, generated widespread concern within both the Irish Government and the Irish general public.

Background From the late 1960's, the Provisional IRA had waged a guerrilla warfare campaign against the British Army with the intention of expelling it from Northern Ireland via force of arms and thereafter uniting Ireland into a 32 county socialist republic. The IRA sourced military materiel from a wide variety of sources, however their primary source of modern small arms in the 1970's was from American arms shipments. After coming under pressure from both the Irish and British governments, in 1980 the Federal Bureau of Investigation set up a specialized unit to target IRA sympathisers purchasing arms in the United States of America. A number of Irish Republican weapons traffickers, such as George Harrison, were later arrested after being caught in sting operations attempting to source arms for the IRA. Around the same time, funds from NORAID were disrupted after its founder Michael Flannery was arrested for conspiracy to illegally obtain weapons, after an associate handed US$16,800 to an undercover FBI agent in return for dozens of automatic rifles, submachine guns and handguns.

Although the IRA had previously launched armed robberies on banks and post offices as a form of "revolutionary tax", increased security at financial institutions along with armed escorts for transfers of cash made such operations unviable, as well as increasing the risk of confrontations with Irish security forces which IRA standing orders forbade. The result of these restrictions meant that in the early 1980s the IRA was on was on the brink of bankruptcy, as it needed an estimated IRL£2.5 million per year to operate. In order to raise funds to purchase weapons from mainland Europe and cover operating costs, the IRA Army Council directed that a number of kidnappings take place in the Republic of Ireland. As they had access to large amounts of on premises cash, supermarket executives were a favoured target. In October 1981, Ben Dunne was kidnapped by the IRA and later released after a IRL£1 million cash ransom was paid. In August 1983, a failed kidnap attempt on Wicklow based retail tycoon Galen Weston resulted in multiple IRA members being shot by armed Garda Síochána officers.

Kidnap of Tidey Don Tidey, originally from the London district of Hackney, served in the Combined Cadet Force in the early 1950s before joining the Territorial Army and eventually rising to the rank of Captain. He later moved to Ireland to work as an executive of Associated British Foods, and was eventually promoted to chairman of Quinnsworth supermarkets. In late November 1983, the then 48-year-old Tidey was driving his teenaged daughter to school on the southern outskirts of Dublin when he was stopped at what appeared to be a police checkpoint in Rathfarnham. A gun was put to his head and he was bundled into a waiting car which drove off. A few days later, a photograph of Tidey holding a recent copy of the Evening Herald newspaper was sent to Associated British Foods and a phone call demanding an IR£5 million ransom was made. In response, the Irish Minister for Justice Michael Noonan reiterated the government's longstanding position that no ransom should be paid to terrorists.

Search for Tidey After being taken to a temporary shelter in an evergreen forest, Tidey was kept confined to a sleeping bag, where he was bound with handcuffs and had a hood placed over his head. Tidey had his business suit removed and was dressed in combat-style clothing, while his shoes were replaced with wellington boots filled with straw. His captors wore khaki fatigues and were masked with balaclavas, and made no attempt to engage in small talk with their hostage. Tidey is fed mostly bread and tea, and was only allowed out of the shelter twice a day to relieve himself.

The search for Tidey focused on remote parts of the border region with Northern Ireland, where PIRA training camps had previously been discovered in wooded areas. The search area was eventually narrowed down to the Ballinamore area in County Leitrim after Garda intelligence noticed a suspicious increase of activity in what was a sparsely populated area, which also happened to be the hometown of hardline Irish republican activist John Joe McGirl. Gardaí decided to search the entire area within a ten-mile radius of Ballinamore, which amounted to approximately 300 square miles, and after securing an outer cordon flooded the area with security force members. The vast size of the search area necessitated trainee Garda recruits from Templemore barracks being drafted into search parties.

Due to the risk of an armed confrontation with the kidnappers, Garda detectives armed with Uzi's were augmented with soldiers carrying a mixture of FN FAL rifles and Gustaf 9mm sub machine guns. Along with a large contingent of police and soldiers, the elite Irish Army Ranger Wing had been deployed to assist the search,RTÉ News report of Tidey's rescue, 17 December 1983. https://www.rte.ie/archives/2013/1216/493118-don-tidey-free-after-23-days/ and were reported to have covertly swept areas of interest using night-vision goggles while armed with HK MP5 sub machine guns.

Rescue in Leitrim On 16 December 1983, Tidey and his kidnappers were tracked down to an area of commercial forestry in Derrada Wood, which was approximately 8 kilometers north of Ballinamore. Tidey would later remark his captors became agitated after hearing voices and dogs barking nearby, after which they released him from handcuffs and replaced his hood with a balaclava similar to theirs. A search party encountered two armed men in military-style clothing amongst some pine trees and challenged them to identify themselves. An exchange of automatic gunfire suddenly erupted which allowed Tidey to escape in the confusion, however a trainee Garda (Gary Sheehan) and an Irish Army soldier (Patrick Kelly) were killed. The kidnappers also threw RGD-5 hand grenades to cover their escape, and promptly disarmed a number of security force members before using them as human shields while advancing across open fields towards the nearest road. From monitoring Garda frequencies on a radio scanner the IRA men knew they were surrounded, and eventually hijacked an Opel Kadett car to aid their escape. Tidey's kidnappers then managed to shoot their way out of the Garda cordon, wounding another Garda officer in the process, and thus escaped capture.

Aftermath The deaths of two Irish security force members during the searches for Tidey caused widespread outrage in the Republic of Ireland, where Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald considered banning Sinn Féin in retaliation, as it was the alleged political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army at that time. The day after Tidey's rescue, three police officers and three civilians were killed after the IRA bombed Harrods department store in central London, with dozens of other civilians also being seriously injured."Bomb unauthorised says IRA". The Guardian, 19 December 1983. FitzGerald sent a message of sympathy to his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher after the bombing, which emphasised how both governments were fighting a common enemy in PIRA. FitzGerald also had an opinion piece published in The Times highlighting the "shared grief and shared outrage" between both countries as a result of political terrorism. Both incidents had long-term political implications regarding Ireland–United Kingdom relations, persuading a previously sceptical Thatcher into promoting greater co-operation with the Irish government, which eventually resulted in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Although none of Tidey's captors were ever convicted, several co-conspirators were successfully prosecuted in relation to his kidnapping: Michael Burke, who was later identified as the "Garda officer" at the fake checkpoint outside Tidey's house, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the kidnapping John Curnan, who owned the forestry where Tidey was held captive, was convicted of false imprisonment and sentenced to 7 years incarceration William Kelly, who hired a car used by the kidnappers, was sentenced to 3 years in prison

McFarlane prosecution Brendan McFarlane (1951 – 21 February 2025) was a Belfast born Irish republican who in 1976 was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the Bayardo Bar attack.Taylor, p.149 While incarcerated in the maximum security Maze Prison, McFarlane was Officer Commanding for PIRA inmates during the 1981 Irish hunger strike in which 10 republican prisoners died. In September 1983, McFarlane lead the Maze Prison escape and went on the run in the Republic of Ireland. In January 1986, McFarlane was recaptured in the Netherlands along with fellow escapee Gerry Kelly after a raid on their safe house by Dutch SWAT Team members and was eventually returned to the Maze Prison to complete his sentence, before being released on parole in 1997. Authorities in the Republic of Ireland had suspected McFarlane of taking part in the kidnap of Tidey and being involved in the deaths of Garda Gary Sheehan and Army Private Patrick Kelly in 1983, and the Garda Crime and Security Branch had discreetly asked senior officers to keep track of McFarlane's movements after his release from prison in Northern Ireland.

Arrest and charge On 5 January 1998, electronic surveillance alerted Gardaí intelligence that McFarlane was on a bus travelling from Dublin Airport to Belfast, and after the bus was stopped outside Dundalk by Gardaa Special Branch officers McFarlane was arrested under the Offences Against the State Act then taken into custody for interrogation. McFarlane was thereafter charged with false imprisonment, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose in relation to Tidey's kidnapping.

Pre-trial legal proceedings McFarlane sought judicial review regarding his prosecution, and challenged alleged fingerprint evidence on the basis that Gardaí had lost a number of exhibits containing the actual fingerprints. The Gardaí had charged McFarlane on the basis of items that were recovered from the rescue site in 1983, such as a milk carton and a plastic container, on which McFarlane's fingerprints were allegedly discovered. Although the physical items had since went missing from Garda headquarters, the actual fingerprints themselves had been photographed and a forensic analysis completed. In March 2006, the Irish Supreme Court ruled McFarlane's trial could proceed. McFarlane was due to stand trial in October 2006, but his legal team launched a judicial review in May 2006 on the grounds that McFarlane could not get a fair trial due to "systematic delays in bringing the prosecution". McFarlane's appeal was dismissed in March 2008 after a landmark Supreme Court rulling, and the trial opened in the Special Criminal Court on 11 June 2008.

Trial