A veteran republican, once at the centre of a sensational city centre kidnapping, shot multiple times over the years and sentenced in the 1980s to life imprisonment on the word of a supergrass, has delivered a near death message to his “friends and comrades”.
Bobby Tohill, a member of the IRA, then the INLA and later also linked to dissidents, described how he is in “agonising pain” as he battles an unidentified terminal illness.
The 65-year-old was filmed inside a hospital and the footage circulated widely. He describes being proud of his involvement in the “war, the struggle or whatever you want to call it” but also being sorry anyone had to die. Tohill said he does want any type of military funeral.
Tohill said he was given nine months to live but outlived that prediction. Then he added: “All my organs are collapsing…it has come till an end.”
“I just want to talk to all my friends and comrades yhrough the years,” Tohill said.
“I don’t really know how to start this but I know people being in bad health, got to accept these things and get on with it.”
He admitted not realising the “atrocious pain” those suffering terminal illness can face. Tohill said he has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and depression while dealing with his physical illnesses and multiple hospitalisations.
“I went through all the rigmaroles of the war and very proud to say I fought for my country and very sorry at the exact same time that anybody had to die,” Tohill said.
“I am glad it is all over, really glad – so happy that it is over because of loads of reasons especially in the west, that not one more person has to die ever again
“I want to make this clear, this is why I am doing this because I want to tell my story.
“I regret a lot of things in my life, I am not ashamed to say that. I don’t want no military funeral in any shape or form, none…I just want to be buried like any normal person.”
For many years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Tohill engaged in arguments with other republicans in west Belfast, It sometimes turned violent.
He was shot a number of times before the 2004 kidnapping from Kelly’s Cellars in Belfast city centre.
Four men entered the bar and bundled him out of the premises. They forced him into a van but it was intercepted nearby at the junction of Millfiend and Divis Street.
According to court reports, Tohill emerged from the back of the van battered and bleeding. Four men were arrested and charged.
But after being granted bail, they all went on the run. All four were later caught and received sentences of between six and a half and eight years.
Tohill never testified against the four and even asked a judge for leniency in the sentencing of two describing them as “personal friends”.
In 2011, Tohill was stabbed during a brawl outside a west Belfast bar.
He was a schoolboy when first imprisoned in Long Kesh after he was accused of involvement in an attack that killed two British soldiers in Divis Flats.
Tohill was sentenced to life for his alleged involvement in the murder of a part-time soldier but his conviction was based on the later discredited testimony of supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick.
While in prison, he went on hunger strike alongside fellow INLA members Gerard ‘Dr Death’ Steenson and Thomas ‘Ta’ Power.
