Declan Arthurs

Declan Arthurs joined the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional IRA in 1982 in the wake of Martin Hurson's death on the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Hurson was also from Galbally like Arthurs, and Arthurs and his friends looked up to Hurson. At the time he joined so did other young men from the same area, like Tony Gormley, Eugene Kelly, Seamus Donnelly and Martin McCaughey.

Declan Arthurs was a Volunteer in the Provisional IRA's (IRA), East Tyrone Brigade in the mid-1980s.

Over a year and a half year period in the mid-1980s the East Tyrone Brigade attacked and bombed RUC barracks and stations in Ballygawley, Tynan, The Birches, Coalisland, Dungannon, Carrickmore and Castlederg. They bombed hotels and other businesses in Kildress, Ballyronan, Dungannon and Cookstown

Arthurs took part in two of the IRA's biggest attacks of the 1980s. At the Attack on Ballygawley barracks in December 1985 and then the Attack on RUC Birches barracks in August 1986, Arthurs was a key member of the team who drove a digger past a security fence, stopped it outside the barracks, lit a fuse, ran to safety and wrecked the barracks with a 200lb bomb in the JCB Digger.

Declan Arthurs was born in Galbally, County Tyrone on 28 October 1965. He was one of six children, and the fourth of Paddy and Amelia Arthurs. Declan worked on the family farm learning how to drive diggers. He worked as an agricultural contractor for the farm. He had one young daughter.