| “ | We're in a war. Sometimes, one has to make pacts with the Devil. | „ |
| ~ O'Connell rationalizing the acts of terror he has committed. |
Ian O'Connell is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Troubles". He is an IRA terrorist who murders a Lebanese drug smuggler who had double-crossed him.
He was portrayed by Anthony Heald, who also played Spencer Talbert in a later episode of Law & Order, as well as Daniel Longdale in 8mm and Simon Canton in Deep Rising.
Early life[]
O'Connell is a high-ranking member of the IRA who, officially, works with Sinn Fein, the nonviolent, political wing of the organization. He presents himself as a patriot and intellectual who uses his words and political connections to advocate for an independent, unified Ireland; in reality, however, he is complicit in several bombings, and personally committed one in 1981 that killed three people, two of them children.
In 1985, he was arrested by the FBI in New York City and imprisoned without charge. For the next five years, O'Connell published articles depicting himself as an unjustly imprisoned martyr to the IRA's cause and blaming the British and American governments for his plight. He gained a small but loyal following among the city's Irish-American population, including several members of city government.
He also established a connection to Lebanese drug smuggler Ahmed Mustafa in prison, using him to smuggle weapons and launder drug money through Syria to the IRA. Eventually, however, Mustafa turned on him by stealing $800,000 from his Syrian clients, which left the IRA with a serious cash flow shortage. The IRA's High Command ordered Mustafa to be killed, and tasked O'Connell with the job.
"The Troubles"[]
O'Connell is transferred to Riker's Island Prison along with Mustafa and Cuban drug dealer Savino Montez. During the transfer, however, O'Connell manages to kill Mustafa by discreetly poisoning him.
After NYPD Homicide Sergeant Max Greevey and Detective Mike Logan discover Mustafa's body, they question O'Connell and Montez, who both claim to be innocent. O'Connell also plays on the Irish-American Logan's patriotism by appealing to their common Irish ancestry. Greevey, however, is suspicious of O'Connell, especially after Montez is found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide that looks staged. Greevey and Logan investigate and discover that one of the prison's guards, Patrick McCarter, is O'Connell's subordinate in the IRA, and was the only other person in Montez's cell at the time of his death.
Greevey and Logan arrest McCarter, and Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette make a deal with him in which he pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter instead of murder in exchange for testifying against O'Connell. McCarter testifies that O'Connell ordered him to kill Montez to eliminate him as a witness to Mustafa's murder, but O'Connell testifies in his own defense that he never met Mustafa and has nothing to do with the provisional, military wing of the IRA; he also claims that the British government is framing him because of his activism on behalf of Irish independence.
O'Connell to have never committed a violent crime, and arrogantly dismisses the innocent civilians killed in IRA bombings as "human error". Stone is convinced he is lying, however, and reaches out to a British Intelligence agent named Fenwick for evidence of O'Connell's involvement with terrorism. Fenwick puts Stone in touch with a woman named Bridgit McDiarmid, whose husband and son were killed in an IRA bombing; Stone calls her as a witness, and she identifies O'Connell as having planted the bomb. The jury finds O'Connell guilty of Mustafa's murder and sentences him to 25 years to life in prison.
Trivia[]
- O'Connell was loosely based on IRA bomber Joe Doherty.
External links[]
- Ian O'Connell on the Law & Order Wiki
