Hunger strike left me with damaged liver & kidney..gardai left me needing a hearing aid

Man wrongly convicted of train robbery speaks out

- EMMA McMENAMY

A MAN who went on hunger strike after being wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit has revealed the life-long damage it had on his body.

Nicky Kelly was convicted for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery in 1976, a crime he was cleared of after serving four years at Portlaoise Prison.

Kelly and two other men, Osgur Breatnach and Bernard McNally who were also cleared, claim they were tortured by Special Branch gardai until they confessed to the £200,000 train heist.

The 71-year-old Wicklow native fled to America after jumping bail but was handed a 12-year sentence in his absence and jailed on his return in 1980.

He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I have never really talked about it [hunger strike]. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly but I had exhausted every court.

“I had no other option. It got to a stage where I felt I had to pin my own welfare, my own health, to highlight my issue on an international level.

“It did have that impact but it had a price and that’s why I’m in the hospital. I have internal problems with my liver and kidney.”