[3] Ewart-Biggs was killed on 21 July 1976, at age 54, when his armoured Jaguar car, part of a four-vehicle convoy on its way to the British Embassy in Dublin, was thrown into the air by a land mine planted by the IRA.

[1] Two months after his murder, the IRA claimed responsibility and said that Ewart-Biggs had been sent to Dublin "to co-ordinate British intelligence activities and he was assassinated because of that."

[8] It later emerged that the UK's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, had at the last minute been forced to cancel plans which would have placed him in the convoy.

Rees wrote in his memoirs, Northern Ireland, a Personal Perspective, that it seemed likely the IRA had known of his impending visit but were unaware of its cancellation.

[9] Thirteen suspected members of the IRA were arrested during raids as the British and Irish governments attempted to apprehend the assassins, but no one was ever convicted of the killings.

In 2006, released Foreign and Commonwealth Office files revealed that the Gardaí had matched a partial fingerprint at the scene to Martin Taylor, an IRA member suspected of gun running from the United States.