A woman who was jailed for life for her part in the IRA's 1973 London car bombing campaign, was one of 16 people against whom a charge of taking part in an illegal parade in Derry was dismissed at the city's Magistrates' Court yesterday.
Marian Price from Stockman's Avenue, Belfast, had denied taking part in the Easter Rising commemoration parade in the Creggan area of Derry on March 28, 2005, knowing the parade to have been illegal.
One of her co-accused was Francis Mackey from Forest Park in Omagh, who is chairperson of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and who was a member of Omagh District Council when the Real IRA killed 29 people, one of them a woman pregnant with twins, in the Co Tyrone town in a car bomb attack on August 15, 1998.
PSNI Insp David McFettridge, who was in charge of policing the parade, told the court that he gave eight warnings to the participants that they were taking part in a "non-notified parade". He also asked the parade organiser to relay a "warning by proxy".
The witness said the marchers were "not overly hostile" to the police and said their behaviour was "impeccable".
He said the reason he gave eight warnings was to facilitate anyone who had not heard a warning because of background noise including band music.
At the conclusion of the prosecuting evidence, the magistrate dismissed the charges against the co-accused following legal submissions by defence lawyers.