"It will not just be four political prisoners against the British Government, but rather against the whole British presence in Northern Ireland, and all that entails -- discrimination, harassment, detention, death squads, the shoot-to-kill policy, censorship, and denial of basic human rights while in custody. "

-- Pol Brennan

Brennan -- Irish Republican, prison protester, escapee from the infamous Maze Prison in Northern Ireland -- compares the Irish people's struggle for self-determination to the struggles for survival by natives of North America, South America, Africa and other lands.

Brennan stresses a political and historical analysis of the conflict in his homeland. For centuries, England has dominated Ireland, starving its people and using them as slave labor. Among the targets for English antagonism: the Irish language (Gaelic) and the Irish religion (Catholicism). England stole much of Ireland's land and gave it to Protestant allies from Scotland. Earlier this century, England divided Ireland in two, claiming the six northernmost counties -- where Protestants loyal to the crown were a majority -- as its own. Since that time, the Catholic minority there has suffered from job discrimination, poor housing and political disenfranchisement.

Authorized Biography of Pol Brennan

Brennan was born in 1953 in the slums of Northern Ireland's Belfast. He remembers vividly how his neighbors' demands for civil rights in the 1960s were met by violence on the part of Northern Ireland's government forces and gangs of vigilantes. When his neighbors fought back, he saw British troops occupy his country, not as impartial peace keepers, but as allies of Northern Ireland's anti Catholic government and gangs. When he was 19, he witnessed the carnage a bomb wreaked on the Catholic patrons of Kelly's Bar -- the streets were stained with blood and strewn with body parts. Later, his twin brother and a Catholic co-worker were abducted from their jobs and tortured for four hours. Brennan himself was threatened at knife point on his job and told to quit. He was questioned, detained and beaten by police and soldiers without provocation literally more often than he can recall.

Brennan became a political activist around that time. Since 1972, he has been involved with the Republican struggle to defend his people's rights, to remove British troops from Irish soil and to reunite Ireland as one republic. In 1974, he was interned for a year by British authorities without being charged with any criminal acts.

In 1976, Brennan was convicted of possessing explosives, and sentenced to 16 years in the H-Block section of Belfast's Maze prison.

Brennan continued his struggle against British oppression in prison, protesting the fact that under Northern Ireland's new "Diplock" system, Republican suspects were deprived of the due process legal rights enjoyed by civilians, but were no longer granted privileges as prisoners of war. Brennan joined other prisoners in protests. Refusing to wear prison garb, he was confined, naked, to his cell for three years, two of those on the dirty protest. At one point he shared a cell with Bobby Sands, who later died on hunger strike.

The Maze prison is notorious for its lack of human rights, as evidenced by the reports of a number of independent observers, including representatives of Amnesty International.

Brennan escaped from the Maze, along with 37 other prisoners, in 1983. Soon after, he arrived in the U.S., where he lived quietly, working in the construction trade, living under the name of Pol Morgan. In 1984 he met U.S. citizen Joanna Volz. They married and together with her daughter Molly, they lived peacefully in the San Francisco Bay Area until Brennan was arrested in January 1993 by U.S. authorities on charges of passport violations and possession of a firearm.

Brennan and his attorney, James Larson, are fighting British attempts to extradite him. The treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain states that the U.S. can decline to extradite people who will be subject to political or religious persecution. Brennan argues that if he were returned to Northern Ireland, he would be subject to the same kind of religious and political persecution with which he grew up, and that as a prison protester and escapee, he would become a victim of the retaliatory violence that has claimed the lives of other Republican prisoners. Among other Maze escapees and prisoners, Seamus McElwaine, Padraig McKearney and Larry Marley have met violent ends in Northern Ireland.

Held in Bay Area prison cells for 3 years, half that time in a building without windows, only seeing the sun when he was taken to court, Brennan was allowed to speak to his family and friends only over the telephone and through thick glass. There he began researching and writing about the Irish-English conflict, contributing to An Phoblacht/Republican News, Northern California's Anderson Valley Advertiser, Irish People, San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, as well as keeping up lively correspondence with notable figures such as author Noam Chomsky and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn. He and fellow Maze escapees Kevin Artt, Terry Kirby and Jim Smyth (also fighting extradition from the Bay Area) were named grand marshals of the 1994 San Francisco St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Currently out on bail, but monitored electronically, Brennan is reunited with his wife and daughter, free to work and take part in mounting his defense against extradition by the British to Northern Ireland.

What people are saying about Pol Brennan's struggle

Dr. Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"The right to political asylum raises complex issues that have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. It is a right that should be scrupulously protected, when circumstances warrant. In the case of Pol Brennan, they clearly do, in my judgement. British rule in Northern Ireland has been marred by serious miscarriages of justice and unjustifiable repression. Pol Brennan himself has impressed me as a person of integrity and courage. He should be granted the right to live here in freedom."

Alexander Cockburn, The Nation

"A sad spectacle in recent years has been the way that successive U.S. governments have rolled over for the British when it comes to the rights of Irish political prisoners and refugees. This surrender to the British has consequences for all political refugees, be they from Ireland, Central America or elsewhere. This is why Pol Brennan's and his friend's extradition cases are so critical and deserve your full support."

Bruce Anderson, The Anderson Valley Advertiser

"My friend Pol Brennan is a victim of our State Department's arbitrary - and shifting- definition of just who is a political refugee. Pol Brennan has been held for three years without trial while our government decides how far to capitulate to the conservative British. As an American, I am outraged that America's traditional sanctuary has now become one more device imperial British interests use to delay a unified Ireland."