Gerry Conlon was a member of the Guildford Four, a group of young men wrongly accused for an attack executed in the United Kingdom.
On November 30, 1974, at age twenty, Gerry Conlon was arrested for an IRA pub bombing in Guildford, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Police tortured him and forced a confession to the crime, despite the fact that Conlon hadn’t even been to Guildford. His family was also convicted of involvement as the Maguire Seven (another group suspected in bombings). Later, forensic evidence was overturned and shown to be falsified. All but his father, Giuseppe Conlon, were released; Giuseppe died five years into his prison sentence.
Conlon’s case was reopened shortly after his father’s death in 1980. In 1989, the Court of Appeal found that Conlon had an alibi and had not committed those bombings. Conlon had served a full fifteen years in prison for the circumstantial evidence and false confessions.
Today, Conlon is an advocate for wrongly imprisoned people like the Birmingham Six and the Bridgewater Three. In the Name of the Father, a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is partially inspired by his autobiography which was released in 1993.
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