A Marxist prisoner joins Belfast hunger strikers

Michael Devine, a member of the Irish National Liberation Army, joined six hunger strikers at the Maze jail who are pressing demands for political prisoner status.

Devine, serving a 12-year sentence for terrorist offenses, is the second member of the Marxist INLA to join the fast, also involving five members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The INLA, an IRA offshoot, claimed responsibility for the 1979 assassination of Conservative Party lawmaker Airey Neave, killed when an explosion ripped apart his car outside the House of Commons in London.

Sunday, convicted IRA terrorist Michael Anthony McKee, one of eight who shot their way out of an Ulster jail, defied hundreds of police to appear before a gathering of Irish nationalists in the Irish Republic.