Career
McMahon was convicted of the assassination of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma and three others (two children and an elderly lady) at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in the west of Ireland. He planted a bomb in Shadow V, a 27 ft fishing boat belonging to Mountbatten at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, near Donegal Bay. The Ireland Republican Army claimed responsibility for the act in a statement released immediately afterwards.
In the statement from the organisation they said: "This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country."
McMahon was arrested by the Garda (the Republic of Ireland"s police force) two hours before the bomb detonated, having been initially stopped on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle.
He was tried for the assassinations in the Republic of Ireland, and convicted by forensic evidence supplied by Doctor James O"Donovan that showed flecks of paint from the boat and traces of nitroglycerine on his clothes. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder on 23 November 1979, but was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
After his release, Toby Harnden in Bandit Country reported that McMahon was holding a tricolour in the first rank of the Ireland Republican Army colour party at a 1998 Ireland Republican Army meeting in Cullyhanna. However, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation report, McMahon has said that he had left the Ireland Republican Army in 1990.
He has twice refused to meet Paul Maxwell"s father, John, who has sought him out to explain the reasons for his son"s death.
In a May 2011 interview for The Telegraph, Maxwell stated that he had "made two approaches to McMahon, the first through a priest, who warned me in advance that he thought there wouldn"t be any positive response. And there wasn"t. I have some reservations about meeting him, obviously – it might work out in such a way that I would regret having made the contact. On the other hand, if we met and I could even begin to understand his motivation.
If we could meet on some kind of a human level, a man to man level, it could help me come to terms with lieutenant
But that might be very optimistic. McMahon knows the door is open at this education".
He likewise refused requests from Knatchbull"s twin brother, who lost an eye in the same explosion. He does have genuine remorse.
Oh God yes.”
He has two grown sons.
He helped with Martin McGuinness"s presidential campaign in 2011, erecting posters for McGuinness around Carrickmacross.
