Father Patrick Ryan, the IRA’s ‘Terror Priest’ whose detonators were used in the Brighton bomb

Father Patrick Ryan, who has died aged 94, was a curate in London during the early days of the Troubles who moonlighted as a robber, money launderer and the IRA’s linkman with the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi; gifted and arrogant, he refused to join the IRA, but ploughed his own furrow as a bomb-maker responsible for hundreds of deaths, earning the nickname “the Padre” from his allies – and, from the press, “the Terror Priest” and “the Devil’s Disciple”.