Canning pleads guilty on 2011 Easter Monday charges

The BBC has a report on the on-going trial of one of the three Londonderry men charged, along with Marian Price, in relation to a 32 County Sovereignty Movement Easter Monday parade in the city in 2011 – the charge is of managing a meeting in support of a proscribed organisation, the IRA.  And we have a conclusion to the judicial process for two of the accused – including Marvin Canning, the 51-year-old brother-in-law of Northern Ireland deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness.  From the BBC report

The parade was organised by the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, and a speech was made by a masked man on behalf of the Real IRA and Oglaigh na hEireann (OnH).

The prosecution told the opening day of the Diplock, no-jury trial at Belfast Crown Court that the colour party, “attired in apparently military uniform”, had been taken to and from the cemetery in the back of a van driven by 51-year-old Marvin Canning.

Last week Canning, a brother-in-law of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, and from Galliagh Park in Derry, pleaded guilty to the same charge but walked free from court after his 10-month jail term was suspended for three years.

Pleading guilty alongside him was fellow Derry man Frank Quigley, 30, from Elmwood Road, whose nine-month jail term was also suspended for three years.

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