Brendan Hughes | Ex-IRA commander, 59

Brendan "The Dark" Hughes, 59, a onetime Irish Republican Army commander who broke with former comrades when they pursued peace in Northern Ireland, has died, Sinn Fein leaders said in Dublin, Ireland.

Mr. Hughes, who died last Saturday, was the IRA's commander inside the Maze prison in Northern Ireland from 1976 to 1980, when he led a 53-day hunger strike seeking "political prisoner" status for the inmates.

Near death, he called off the strike when IRA leaders believed they had struck a deal with British authorities. But it fell through, triggering a second hunger strike in 1981 that ended in the deaths of 10 prisoners.

Mr. Hughes, nicknamed "The Dark" because of his Mediterranean looks, was one of the IRA's most feared gunmen in Belfast in the early 1970s.

He was a longtime confidante of Gerry Adams, who since 1983 has led the IRA's political party, Sinn Fein. But Mr. Hughes became an increasingly trenchant critic of Adams after the IRA's 1997 decision to call a cease-fire so that Sinn Fein could join peace talks on Northern Ireland's future.

- AP