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Podcast: The BelTel
Episode: Rory O’Connor: The Anti-Treaty IRA leader executed by his former friends
Description: IRA leader Rory O’Connor was once a close comrade of fellow republican Michael Collins and Kevin O’Higgins - indeed he was O’Higgins best man.   But just over a year later after the wedding, O’Higgins signed his friend’s death warrant.    O’Connor’s execution along with Liam Mellows, Dick Barrett and Joe McKelvey, added to the bitterness of Ireland’s civil war and made O’Connor a republican martyr, albeit a forgotten one.   In ‘To defend the Republic’, the first biography of O’Connor’s life, historian Gerard Shannon tells the story of this eni...